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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28302375">an ocean away</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/novel_concept26/pseuds/novel_concept26'>novel_concept26</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>wedding bells [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, Idiots in Love, Long Distance Yearning, Phone Sex, They're Just Always Like This And We Love Them For It, Two Days; Zero Patience</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 02:09:04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>25,069</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28302375</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/novel_concept26/pseuds/novel_concept26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Jamie is off to London for a weekend celebrating Owen's upcoming wedding; Dani, back home, finds certain methods to combat the loneliness of staying behind.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Dani Clayton/Jamie</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>wedding bells [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2072928</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>521</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>an ocean away</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“You’re sure?” Jamie says for maybe the sixth time in a row. “You’re absolutely sure you don’t want me to stay behind?”</p><p><em>A complicated question</em>, thinks Dani, because <em>want</em> and <em>need</em> are two terribly different things. She <em>wants</em> Jamie here, especially feeling this way--the upsetting middle ground between actually sick and just generally miserable. But Owen’s bachelor party is a once in a lifetime thing, and one of them ought to be there for him.</p><p>“He’s only going to make a twat of himself,” Jamie insists. “You know Owen, he’ll get too drunk an hour in, and start sending Hannah pouty faces asking why she’s left him all on his lonesome.”</p><p>“Someone,” Dani points out, “should be there to intervene, don’t you think?”</p><p>Jamie makes grumpy noises, unable to argue. There are warring factions within her, Dani can tell with more than a little amusement: the part of Jamie which wants very much to board that flight and spend a weekend making fun of Owen butting up against the part of her which never wants to leave Dani alone in the apartment for long. Especially now, at five in the morning, Dani flushed and lightly fevered with a bug that’s been tightening its hold for two days.</p><p>“If you get worse,” she says finally, “you call. I’ll be on the first flight back, no questions.”</p><p>“It’s just a cold,” Dani laughs. “A stupid summer cold, Jamie, I’ll be fine.”</p><p>“Tea,” says Jamie, hefting her suitcase and looking helpless in a manner Dani can’t help finding sweet. “I’ve left detailed instructions on how to make it without poisoning yourself. And there’s soup in the freezer. And--”</p><p>“I can take care of myself. Promise.” Sliding from the bed, Dani pulls the comforter around her shoulders and follows Jamie out of the room. “Call when you land, all right? And when you’re done with whatever Owen’s best man has planned.”</p><p>“Owen’s best man,” Jamie says dryly, “is effectively Owen. Lord knows Henry won’t have the first idea how to plan a decent party. We’re probably going to have a twelve-course meal where all the dishes are named after fucking puns.”</p><p>She kisses Dani goodbye like she’s about to board the Titanic, her face a mask of concern. Dani leans into her, feeling small and tired and unaccountably lonely already.</p><p>“First flight back,” Jamie repeats. “Say the word. I’m already here.”</p><p>And then she’s gone--off into the Lyft waiting downstairs, gone for a long weekend in London. Dani sighs, letting herself sag onto the couch with the blankets pulled up around her head. Thank god, she thinks, it’s only the bachelor party, and not the wedding. She can’t imagine missing Hannah dressed like a queen, her eyes shining as they find Owen at the end of that aisle.</p><p>A cold now, missing Jamie for a few days, is far better than an illness next month. It’ll be nice, going back overseas--nice to smell the clean French air, to reconvene with their old friends for the first time in years. She’s looking forward to it, to the first wedding with Jamie by her side since...well, since the insanity of her own mother’s, six years ago.</p><p>So much changes in six years. How nervous she had been, back then: hiding away at the manor, pretending not to feel too much for the scrappy gardener with her crooked little smile, pretending the hardest thing in the world would be to insist falsely that Jamie, of all people, could be her girlfriend. How silly it had been, that week--and how life-changing.</p><p>They’d moved to America a year later, both of them itching for a new adventure. Jamie had wondered if Dani would want to return to Iowa after all, to reclaim the life she’d long fled. Dani hadn’t been interested. Dani had only wanted to start somewhere fresh, somewhere not already primed to look at them with jeering eyes.</p><p>Vermont, in the end, had pulled the hardest. Jamie had been talking about it in wistful tones for the longest time, a sparkle in her eye Dani found impossibly endearing. Jamie, who has never been much for <em>places</em> or <em>people</em> so much as setting her roots where she feels most needed, wanting to see Vermont was all the reason in the world.</p><p>So much changes, but all the changes have felt <em>good</em>. Henry, sober now and acting as proper father figure to kids who grow taller and stranger and more brilliant every year. Hannah and Owen, finally ready to take the next step into their own grand adventure, which would have sent them sprinting to opposite sides of the house in terror back then. Everyone at home, though not with one another anymore--not in the way they had been, back at the manor, back when Dani had thought home was an idle word unfit for her own life.</p><p>Her phone buzzes, jolting her out of a doze. Jamie, with that little red heart beside her name: <em>at the airport. boarding in fifteen. love you, Poppins. </em></p><p>She smiles, shifting the phone and snapping what might be the most pathetic picture ever sent to another human being. <em>This will be me until you get back. Remember to breathe. I love you. </em></p><p>***</p><p>So much changes in six years, but Jamie thinks some things are stable for a reason. Things like Dani’s smile, radiant even in a photo where she is unshowered, feverish, wrapped double in their bedspread on the couch. Things like Jamie’s desperate dislike of flying, which she has been playing down for days to keep Dani’s guilt over staying behind low.</p><p>Things like Owen, greeting her at the airport with arms spread wide and glasses painfully out of fashion, and Hannah, who says, “I hope you got a good night’s rest, he is...very excited about this evening.”</p><p>“You mean tomorrow evening,” Jamie corrects. Hannah raises her eyebrows. She groans. “You’re kidding. You told me it was <em>tomorrow</em>, Owen.”</p><p>“It’s just a small dinner,” he says hurriedly, grabbing her bag and giving her his best <em>please, I haven’t seen you in three years, and it’s my wedding</em> smile. “What do Americans call it? A pre-game. Quiet. Simple.”</p><p>“As all meals with you are,” Hannah says, a teasing dip to her voice making Jamie wonder what Owen’s definition of <em>simple</em> looks like these days. </p><p>“You'll be coming along, yeah?” Jamie asks. Her hope dwindles at the sight of Hannah’s smile, too amused for comfort. “Help me keep him honest.”</p><p>“Oh, yes,” Owen adds, sliding an arm around Hannah’s shoulders and pulling her close. “Say yes, love, imagine the festivities--”</p><p>“I am imagining,” Hannah says, kissing his cheek fondly. “And I am declining. You know how I feel about crowds and...chefs.”</p><p>“Aw, no, Owen.” Jamie shakes her head. “You didn’t tell me it’d be you and fifteen of your closest culinary mates, I only have so much food-related trivia on call--”</p><p>The complaining is half the fun, really. In truth, she’d have been amazed to discover no social engagement waiting on the other side of her jet lag. She only wishes Hannah would agree to come along, but Hannah--unlike Jamie--has the dignity to say no to situations she finds exhausting.</p><p>The hotel room feels too big without someone to share it--her mind keeps pulling irresistibly back to a long week years ago, to Dani curled beside her in a massive bed Jamie had felt was entirely too small for two people--but Owen is vibrating with joy. He keeps talking about the wedding itself as though it can’t arrive fast enough, his body jouncing up and down on the end of the bed as she digs around for the evening’s outfit change.</p><p>“Ridiculous,” she says. “Who’s doing the flowers?”</p><p>“Hannah’s got a contact over in the country--”</p><p>“Hannah’s got a contact over in <em>Vermont</em>,” Jamie says, grinning. He flaps a hand. </p><p>“Oh, don’t be silly. She said you’d do that, you know.”</p><p>“Hannah?”</p><p>“Dani. Texted last night to tell me not to let <em>you </em>talk either of us into shipping hundreds of flowers over from your shop. Good head, that one.”</p><p>“Better than mine, by far.” She sighs. “Right. I’m gonna shower, get ready. Meet you in the lobby in an hour?”</p><p><em>Dinner. Not so bad. </em>Tomorrow might be a different story--tomorrow, she’ll find out whatever Henry has decided best suits a man in the prime of love and his closest friends. Tonight, at least, is only dinner and drinks and Owen likely driving them all absolutely mad raving about Hannah’s smile.</p><p>“Sweet, really,” she mumbles, sidling into the bathroom and inspecting the shower situation. Enormous is the understatement of the year--she can’t imagine anyone needing all that space for innocent purposes. <em>Shame Dani isn’t here. </em></p><p>Is it cruel, sending Dani a quick photo--smile, wink, bare shoulders with this shower as backdrop--and a text? Maybe. She likes to think it’ll make Dani smile. Maybe even make her feel a bit better. Anything to help.</p><p>She steps under the spray, heat turned up to maximum, and closes her eyes.</p><p>***</p><p>Dani is, in fact, feeling much better. It’s too early to say for sure, but a long nap appears to have done much of the work toward sending her cold off to think about what it’s cost her. Namely, time spent with Jamie in what looks like the most luxurious shower in London.</p><p><em>miss you</em>, Jamie had sent along with a tousle-headed grin. Nothing more, nothing particularly sensational--a woman’s shoulders should <em>not</em> be so effective--but Dani finds herself tracing the photo with the edge of her fingernail all the same. There’s something about knowing Jamie is too far away to touch that makes her feel...</p><p>She shakes her head. It isn’t as though Jamie leaves often, or that Dani can’t amuse herself while she’s away. There are plenty of movies to watch, crosswords to do, work to catch up on. This will be fine.</p><p><em>Nice shower</em>, she sends back, and sets her phone firmly on the counter as she sets to work defrosting soup.</p><p>***</p><p><em>Nice shower</em>, Dani replies, without so much as an emoji. Jamie frowns at the phone, scrubbing at her hair with a towel.</p><p>
  <em>still feel rotten?</em>
</p><p>Nothing for almost ten minutes. Then, finally, a picture: Dani in the kitchen, a spoon halfway to her mouth, eyebrows raised.</p><p>
  <em>Much better. Thank the soup. </em>
</p><p>Jamie sighs, relieved to an unexpected degree. <em>keep resting</em>, she sends back, one thumb dancing across the keyboard as she struggles into a shirt. <em>check on you after dinner. </em></p><p>Dani sends only a thumbs-up in response, likely still worn out. Lonely as it is without her, Jamie’s glad she’d been wise enough to stay behind; Dani pushes herself too hard, never quite allowing for the time needed to build her reserves back up again. It’s a relief, seeing her finally accept how human she is, despite her own wishes.</p><p>Dinner is delicious--how could it be anything else, paid for by a man with endless cash and helmed by a horde of professional chefs?--and Jamie finds the company isn’t intolerable. Henry, like Hannah, seems to have decided one night out is more than enough, but Owen’s friends are largely diverse--originating from all over Europe, bound together by a single desire to feed the masses--and they take to her well. She finds herself seated between a round-bellied young woman with a shining smile and a bald man in his mid-fifties who seems only to call Owen by his last name.</p><p>“Haven’t seen you before,” the man--Scottish, by the sound of him--tells Jamie. “You cook?”</p><p>“Only for my enemies,” Jamie says gamely, raising a glass to her own inadequacy. “I leave that mainly to my--”</p><p>She hesitates, remembering too many moments in grocery stores, on trains, in amusement parks where people had glared, had shifted their children away, had made for the exit as though Jamie carried some lethal disease. Even now, in such a modern age, people are unreliable.</p><p>“Boyfriend,” the woman suggests in a heavy Greek accent. Jamie shakes her head. She raises her eyebrows, looking pleased. “Ahh. Girlfriend, then. She good?”</p><p>“Hasn’t killed us yet,” Jamie allows, grinning a little. Owen makes a happy gesture with his fork.</p><p>“Of course she hasn’t! I’ve been giving her lessons!”</p><p>Jamie laughs, unwilling to explain that his “lessons” have looked an awful lot from her position like Dani squinting into a tiny phone screen, trying to decipher Owen’s swinging camera angles as he explains in lofty terms how one goes about deboning a chicken.</p><p>“So, where is she?” Jamie’s new friend asks, wiggling her eyebrows. “Can’t stomach this one long enough for a dinner?”</p><p>Owen looks offended, though he’s beaming with the glaze of too much wine and too much joy. “Excuse me, I am a star.”</p><p>“She took ill,” Jamie explains into her own wine glass. “Didn’t feel right about her flying over to infect the English with her American cold.”</p><p>“Well? Show us a photo, come on.”</p><p>A person hasn’t really lived, Jamie thinks wryly, until they’ve sat in a posh restaurant with fifteen strangers ringing fork against glass as they chant, “Photo, photo, photo” in unison. She raises her hands in surrender, digs out her phone.</p><p>“What are you joining in for,” she adds to Owen, who is obviously gleeful about this turn of events, “you know <em>exactly </em>what she looks like.”</p><p>“Yes,” Owen says, almost primly. “She is lovely. You are depriving us all of loveliness.”</p><p>Jamie chooses a photo at random--any picture of Dani is the right one, she’s found--and passes her phone around for inspection. The image, the two of them laughing at a party she barely remembers now, earns its fair share of oohs and sighs.</p><p>“You’re lucky,” one man says approvingly. </p><p>“You’re glowing,” a woman announces with delight.</p><p>“You’re texting,” Jamie accuses when the phone reaches Owen’s hands. He gives her a sloppy smile. </p><p>“Only letting her know what she’s missing, hang on--”</p><p>***</p><p>Dani is having a surprisingly difficult time keeping busy. Her body seems to be rebelling against the idea of further rest; every time she stretches out on the couch or bed, she finds herself too warm, too restless. It’s as though the fever has broken and left something considerably more impossible to ward off in its wake.</p><p>She paces the apartment, hoping to burn some of this unexpected energy by doing chores, but Jamie had covered just about every base before leaving. The dishes are clean, put carefully away; the laundry is finished and folded in the basket. Even the bathroom mirror seems to gleam, as though Jamie sneakily gave it a good polish while Dani was sleeping.</p><p>She’s just trying to decide how irresponsible it would be to take a walk when her phone buzzes once. Twice. Three times. She frowns at the messages beneath Jamie’s name.</p><p>
  <em>heeeeey girl. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>why aren’t you here.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>we all missssss your faaaace.</em>
</p><p>There is also, she notes, a string of utterly incomprehensible emojis: a sushi, a squirrel, four birds, and a pair of glasses. She squints, wondering if this is what a fever feels like on the warpath, out for revenge against a mind that had considered it banished.</p><p>A fourth buzz. <em>shit, sorry, Owen stole my goddamned phone. hope we didn’t wake you. </em></p><p>Dani laughs. <em>How did Owen get your phone?</em></p><p>Jamie manages to sound disgruntled even in text. <em>fucker took advantage of my willingness to show off my beautiful girlfriend to utter strangers. remind me why i came out for him again?</em></p><p>***</p><p><em>Because</em>, Dani replies in short order, <em>you are a good friend. </em></p><p>Jamie sighs. <em>Good friend</em> probably implies she’d be in poor taste, murdering the man on his happy weekend.</p><p><em>feeling better, at least? </em>she asks, half an ear tuned to Owen explaining how Dani Clayton had come into their lives in the first place. He’s telling the story fairly well--missing some of the bigger details, maybe, about how brave Dani had been to leave her life behind and start fresh--and everyone seems properly enamored with the American au pair. As they certainly should be.</p><p><em>Bored, mostly</em>, Dani says. Jamie can imagine her in the apartment, leaning against the wall as she taps out each message with perfect grammar. <em>I thought I’d clean up, at least, but you seem to have this place ready to sell by Monday. </em></p><p>Jamie laughs. <em>was trying to keep you in bed, Poppins. sick, remember? </em></p><p><em>Don’t feel sick now</em>, Dani replies. There’s something about the way she frames it--maybe the fact that those little still-typing bubbles keep turning up and disappearing, like Dani can’t quite find the right words to follow-up--that piques Jamie’s interest.</p><p>
  <em>what...do you feel?</em>
</p><p>The bubbles appear and vanish six times--Jamie counts, amusement heightening with every tick higher--before Dani repeats, <em>Bored </em>and adds an emoji with an exceptionally deep frown.</p><p>
  <em>me too, honestly--oh, balls, Owen is ordering those shots, the ones that come to the table on fire? pray for me</em>
</p><p>***</p><p>Dani sighs, letting the phone clatter back onto the counter. She could keep up this banter with Jamie indefinitely--<em>Pray to whose god, exactly?</em>; <em>fucked if i care, just make sure they aren’t flammable</em>--but the whole point of Jamie flying five hours forward in time was to spend the weekend paying attention to Owen. He deserves as much, and Dani can take care of herself.</p><p>Dani can find <em>something</em> to keep her mind off this shift in mood residual exhaustion can’t seem to kick.</p><p>Dani can...</p><p>Her phone buzzes, and she dives for it eagerly, hating herself a little even as she thumbs it open to find Jamie wearing a comically beleaguered expression, a shot glass raised to her lips. Owen stands behind her, arms over his head as though his favorite team just scored the winning goal.</p><p><em>help. he’s started singing</em>, is all that accompanies the photo. Dani snorts.</p><p>There’s a certain indignity to the way her body seems not to care about context, where Jamie is concerned. About how even now, looking at this photo where Jamie is trying to make her laugh with eyebrows furrowed and lips pursed, she can’t entirely ward off the heat climbing slowly higher. Jamie is busy, Jamie is being a good friend, Jamie is <em>across the goddamn ocean</em>, and Dani--</p><p>Is supposed to be sick.</p><p>Would almost prefer to still feel sick, if she’s honest with herself. At least with a fever scratching behind her eyes and a chill wound into her bones, she’d be distracted from missing Jamie so much, it feels like an extra presence in the room.</p><p>She groans, pushing the phone away, trying not to imagine herself curled in the seat next to Jamie in that restaurant, her hand on Jamie’s thigh under the table. This is the one thing she’d never fully anticipated, falling in love with someone--not the security of another person’s arms, not the sense of home built within another person’s walls, but the simple ache of missing them when they’re gone. Jamie’s been away half a day, and the need to reach for her hand is near pathological.</p><p><em>Could be something else, too</em>, she concedes. Something less complicated, something so ingrained after six years, she hasn’t had much cause to look at it too closely. If Jamie had taught her want, she had never intentionally left Dani hanging with it; she’d always been there within a matter of hours, willing and eager to build Dani up and lead her back down again.</p><p>In a way, it had been nice, having that added anticipation of waiting for Jamie to get home from work, to join her in the pleasant haze of desire. More than once, she’d even caught Jamie unawares, pulling her into an embrace before Jamie could get her jacket off and the door locked behind her. It had always been <em>fun</em>, waiting for Jamie--a sort of expectable wind-up with a timely conclusion.</p><p>This, though. This is different. This is--</p><p>***</p><p>--hilarious, watching Owen slump against the wall laughing. Jamie leans back, arms folded, eyes following him as he slides down, down, down to sit beside the elevator.</p><p>“A wreck,” she pronounces in a voice utterly stable, utterly sober. Someone had needed to keep their shirt on. “Look at the state of you, you’re practically drooling.”</p><p>“Good dinner,” he says, little giggly hiccups twitching up his body. She shakes her head. </p><p>“Great dinner. Terrible tolerance for drink. When did you get so pitiful?”</p><p>“Not pitiful,” he insists, allowing her to drag him to his feet. “Jus’ very...very...drunk.”</p><p>“Hannah’s a lucky woman,” she teases. “Getting to cart your clumsy--hey, now, easy.” She’s just remembering how much height he has on her as he slips sideways, nearly takes them both down in a heap on the tile.</p><p>Dani would be good here, she thinks. Dani is excellent with drunk people in a way Jamie can’t quite match; her patience is boundless with both sloppy joy and endless tears, while Jamie finds she can handle it all for about half an hour before craving the peace and quiet of her own bed. </p><p>“Jamie. Jamie.” Owen leans down, his eyes huge and glassy. “S’a party tomorrow, Jamie.”</p><p>“Yes,” she agrees. “Against my better judgement, there is.”</p><p>“S’a party for <em>me</em>,” he says happily. “D’you think...d’you think there’ll be <em>games</em>?”</p><p>She tries to imagine Henry Wingrave setting up a round of pin the tail on the donkey--or perhaps pin the mustache on the Owen--and laughs out loud. “We should be so lucky.”</p><p>He’s surprisingly easy to coax into his own room, though he doesn’t stop talking even when she gives him a light shove and watches him topple onto the bed. He’s still mumbling, “Be better if Hannah was--d’you think Hannah will come? If I ask nicely? If...alcohol her--”</p><p>She shuts the door gently on his half-snore, shaking her head. A memory rises, old and soft and comfortable, of another drunk person in another hotel bed, far away and long ago. Dani had been so dangerously tempting, hair smelling of smoke, eyes seeking Jamie out across a too-big, too-small, too-single hotel room--</p><p>It would have been a better night, with Dani. Not that the night was a tragedy, by any consideration: Owen’s friends had, ultimately, been more interested in teasing him than trying to muscle conversation out of her, and it had been good listening to them all laugh. Good in that way she used to find fulfilling, amusing, <em>enough</em>, before Dani walked into her life and led her by the hand into truly living.</p><p>Now, it’s almost like haunting another person’s world, sitting back and nursing the same drink for hours while the rest of them laugh and jostle. It would have been different, with Dani by her side. Dani is good at putting on that smile, at causing conversations to part around her, to welcome her in. Jamie has never quite possessed the same knack. </p><p><em>thinking of you</em>, she texts in her too-quiet, too empty-room, and remembers Dani six years ago. Dani in a dress she’d needed help unzipping, fresh out of her first gay club, fresh out of any desire to pretend she wasn’t feeling more than either she or Jamie was prepared to handle. Jamie laughs now, remembering how poorly she’d slept in that bed while Dani had dreamed. Remembering how silly she’d been, furtively sneaking out to chain-smoke and vent her fears to Hannah.</p><p>Her phone is silent as she undresses, pulls on an old gray tank top and shorts, scrubs her face with a damp cloth. She settles back against the pillows, raises the phone, snaps off a photo with an additional, <em>turning in. don’t--</em> She pauses, running through the options. Forget to eat? Stay up too late? Work too hard?</p><p><em>don’t miss me too much</em>, she decides, allowing herself a small, cheeky grin. It’ll make Dani laugh, probably. Will reassure her, certainly, to know Jamie has made it back to this parody of home for the evening. </p><p><em>Sleep</em>, she tells herself, an echo of a woman six years younger and six years less prepared for love. It is so much harder, without Dani here, though that woman would never have believed it.</p><p>***</p><p><em>don’t miss me too much. </em>She’s kidding, Dani thinks dimly. Must be. There’s simply no way Jamie is doing this to her on <em>purpose. </em></p><p>Simply no way Jamie would send this picture and that message and then just...go to sleep.</p><p><em>Time difference</em>, she reminds herself, only dimly aware of her own fingers squeezing around her phone. <em>It’s got to be, what...midnight for her?</em></p><p>She glances at the clock, cheerfully chiming just past eight. Later, even. That Jamie was thoughtful enough to send a photo with her goodnight means Jamie was doing a <em>good</em> thing. A positive, kind, girlfriend-ly thing that is in no way making Dani’s evening more difficult than it already was.</p><p>Jamie has absolutely no way of knowing how difficult it already was.</p><p>Her eyes slide back to the message, to Jamie leaning against a mountain of soft pillows with that sleepy half-smile she gets when Dani’s kept her up too late talking. She seems to have taken the picture moments before falling asleep, the curve of one shoulder falling into shadow in the lamplight, the bare minimum of makeup smudged around her eyes. It is at once the most Dani has ever missed someone, and the most Dani has ever needed someone in her own bed. </p><p>Not someone. Jamie. Just Jamie. If she thought anything else would help--if she thought she could find a video on the internet or a fantasy in her head that would match the real thing, this wouldn’t be such a big deal. None of that--none of the <em>usual</em> <em>assistants</em>, as Jamie would put it with a laugh--has ever made much sense to Dani. </p><p>Truthfully, sex never made much sense to Dani before Jamie. Jamie likes to preen and laugh when she says it, mock-proud of her own prowess, but it’s not a line. Attraction before Jamie had been a thing she’d tried to ignore, an idea bigger than what she was capable of wrapping her mind around. She hadn’t felt it for Eddie--for any of the other boys in town, either--and feeling anything for women had simply not been allowed. </p><p>By the time Jamie walked through the door, she’d been starting to think she was better off. Not letting physical urges steer the ship. Not letting anyone move too close, near enough for her to even think about wanting them. It had felt safe and easy, putting her head down and train her body not to <em>want </em>anything at all. </p><p>And then Jamie, and that week that had felt like a match held to her skin for days. Jamie in that bed, on a crowded dance floor, sitting close at dinner. Jamie doing a whole lot of <em>nothing</em> half the time, careful not to cross lines she couldn’t take back, and Dani had felt as though someone had kicked down the strongest door she’d ever put up in a single blow. </p><p>“I’m not <em>that</em> good,” Jamie had laughed the first time she’d tried to put it into words, and Dani had stumbled over her explanation so badly, she’d had to stop. Jamie, taking her face in gentle hands, smile growing serious, had said, “I know what you mean, though. I--it feels like--”</p><p><em>Feels</em>, Dani had thought helplessly, pushing toward her with a kiss that said more than words ever could. <em>That’s it, isn’t it--how it feels, no one could have explained. </em>No one could have prepared her for the sheer strength of that tide, for how it had grasped her around the waist and yanked her under before she could draw breath. </p><p>Jamie doesn’t seem to mind that she isn’t interested in playing out these feelings on her own, that she doesn’t seem wired to turn herself on or work herself up without help. Jamie doesn’t seem to mind at all how often her assistance is required--how often Dani unexpectedly pulls her into the shower, or back into bed when she’s been wandering half-dressed around the bedroom in search of a sock. </p><p>Dani certainly doesn’t mind, either--most days. Days that are not <em>this one</em>, with Jamie an ocean away and every nerve in her body screaming for release. </p><p>“This is stupid,” she mutters. She’s a grown woman, a perfectly capable adult. People work through cravings all the time, pretending not to be going slowly out of their minds as they move around the world. She, too, can be bigger than her body’s needs. She can prepare a meal in peace, eat quietly with her own thoughts, reorganize the silverware drawer like she isn’t counting the hours since Jamie left this morning. </p><p>
  <em>Flight out at six, seven hours in the air--landed five hours ahead. Bundled straight to the hotel in Owen’s car, to dinner shortly thereafter, where she’s been playing nice for another several hours with people she’s never met and the happiest, drunkest version of Owen we’ve ever seen. She’s tired. No wonder she’s tired.</em>
</p><p>She’s tired, and Dani ought to be, too. Dani, whose body is still too proud of having kicked that cold in the teeth, whose body has apparently decided it never needs to sleep again. She is electric, a sparking, unnatural heat twisting her blood through her veins until she feels as though she could run a marathon. Build a house. Ride Jamie until they both pass out--</p><p><em>No. No, because that is not on the table</em>. She closes her eyes. Checks the clock furtively, swears under her breath when it stubbornly sings 8:57 back at her. More fast math. Jamie is five hours ahead--Jamie’s clock will read nearly two in the morning. Jamie, who hasn’t gotten much sleep these past few days, staying up to watch Dani doze with a guarded worry she’d tried not to show. Jamie, who doesn’t sleep on planes, who deserves good, solid rest in a nice...big...soft...</p><p>She groans. Ridiculous. This is ridiculous. And it’s only going to get worse, she suspects, so maybe it’s best to just give in now. One phone call. She’ll be quick, let Jamie go back to sleep just as soon as she’s allowed herself a few measures of Jamie’s sleepy voice over the line. Anything to remind herself Jamie is still out there, still loves her, will be back day after tomorrow ready to pick up where they’d left off before that stupid cold found its way into Dani’s side of the bed. </p><p>Her hand hovers over the phone, embarrassment and a simple, inelegant need for Jamie’s reassuring laugh at war with one another. She sighs. </p><p>Five minutes. She’ll take five minutes of Jamie’s time, and then it’ll be to bed with both of them. Jamie won’t mind.</p><p>***</p><p>The ring jerks Jamie out of a sound sleep. She must, she realizes blearily, have dropped her phone right beside her on the pillow when she’d nodded off, waiting for Dani to send back a goodnight text of her own. She hadn’t even bothered to drop it into do not disturb mode, her head too heavy after a day that had felt like three.</p><p>She’s staring at it now as though it is utterly foreign to her hand. Part of her--a part growing stronger by the second--recognizes the phone is actually ringing, that someone is actually calling her. The other part is still wound in dream logic, in dream hands on her skin, a dream tongue curling between her--</p><p>“Hello?” She sounds to her own ears as though she hasn’t spoken in weeks. “Dani?”</p><p>“Hi,” Dani says in the smallest voice Jamie’s ever heard. “I--hi. I’m sorry. I woke you.”</p><p>“Nah,” Jamie mumbles, rolling onto her back and rubbing sleep from her eyes. “Nah, I was jus’--just restin’ a bit--”</p><p>“It’s past midnight,” Dani points out. Jamie stifles a yawn with the back of her hand, glances toward the hotel clock with its green backlight. </p><p>“It is, yeah. By...a bit. Dani, are you--” She sits up with some effort, blinking repeatedly in an effort to crawl back to the land of the living. “Are you all right? Fever come back?”</p><p>“Yeah--I mean, no. No, I’m...fine.” She sounds embarrassed, mainly. Strong, though. None of that hoarse, obvious fatigue from the past few days. Jamie sinks back against the pillows, relief curling comfortable hands around her panic and strangling it where it stands. </p><p>“Good. S’good to hear. Why, uh. Why call at--what is it there, nine?”</p><p>Dani makes a small sound of assent. “Don’t...laugh.”</p><p>“Why would I--”</p><p>“I missed you,” Dani says in a rush. “I know, I know you’ve been gone, like, a day. I know, and you must be <em>so </em>tired, and it’s silly, but I just keep...pacing. And sort of...expecting to hear your voice from the next room, only you’re in London, obviously, and I’m--not.”</p><p>Jamie’s smile, which has been growing the longer Dani rants on, softens. “You missed me.”</p><p>“I saw you this morning,” Dani says, almost helplessly. “But I can’t...remember the last time I slept without you, and it’s just...it’s dumb. But I wanted to hear your voice. Is that...I mean, you don’t have to stay for long...”</p><p>“Stay as long as you like,” Jamie says comfortably, shifting the phone against her ear and stretching out to take up as much bed as she can. The pillows she had positioned on Dani’s usual side of the bed, too soft and not nearly grabby enough to really perform their role of Dani Clayton convincingly, are still in place. She leans her head into the one nearest, sighs. “So, what did you do today while I was skimming clouds and watching Owen make an utter prat of himself?”</p><p>“Was it bad?” Dani asks. She laughs. </p><p>“Nah, all in good fun. That man loves Hannah Grose, I can tell you that much.”</p><p>“A stranger passing on the street could tell me that much,” Dani says. There’s a noise like shuffling material, followed by Dani saying, “I didn’t do much of anything, really. Slept a lot. Time’s weird, you know?”</p><p>“When one person is flying into a timezone set forward several hours, you mean?”</p><p>“And the other loses half a day to a sick nap. Yeah. We could be talking from opposite ends of time travel just now.”</p><p>“Sort of are,” Jamie points out. Dani hums. <br/>
<br/>
“Sorry again. About waking you. How’s the hotel? How’s the bed?”</p><p>“Clean,” Jamie answers honestly. “And...big. Bit too big, if I’m honest. Feel weird sleeping in it alone.”</p><p>“You could always invite Owen for a sleepover,” Dani suggests. “I’m sure he’s great company after a night out on the town.”</p><p>“One,” Jamie says, grinning, “that man drools entirely too much to be allowed in any bed of mine. Two, I, uh. Was having a very pleasant dream I’d much rather he not intrude upon.”</p><p>There is a long beat of silence in which she almost thinks Dani has hung up by mistake. Finally, in a thin, almost dizzy voice, Dani says, “Dream?”</p><p>“Mmhmm.” The kind that lasts, Jamie realizes. The kind that presses the bounds of sleep and reality, spills over into her waking world in technicolor. If she closes her eyes, she can almost put herself back into its grasp, into soft hands tracing--</p><p>“What, uh. What kind of dream?”</p><p>“Usual kind, when I’m missing you.” Maybe another time, she’d be coy about it. Sheepish, even. If she were a little more awake, a little less comfortable in this bed, with Dani’s voice almost nervous in her ear. “Think you’re familiar with its like. I seem to remember you having a very similar one a few years back, in a hotel just like this...”</p><p>Dani doesn’t laugh, as she expects. Dani sounds as though she’s barely breathing. </p><p>“I--I’m <em>really</em> sorry to have woken you, then.”</p><p>She doesn’t <em>sound</em> sorry, Jamie thinks with interest. She sounds curious, more than anything. As though it somehow hasn’t occurred to her that Jamie might have dreams like this, too. </p><p>“You could...tell me about it.”</p><p>Now this, Jamie thinks, sitting up slightly, is interesting. This is <em>exceedingly</em> interesting. </p><p>“Are we in the habit of sharing dreams now?” she asks, teasing. “Only, I seem to remember someone holding that card pretty close to the vest, back in the day--”</p><p>“I was embarrassed,” Dani says, and if Jamie closes her eyes, she can hear the smile in her voice. “You’d just gotten done telling me I had been humping my best friend in my <em>sleep</em>, who <em>wouldn’t</em> have been embarrassed--”</p><p>“Wouldn’t call it humping,” Jamie interjects idly. “More of a persistent rub, if you will...”</p><p>“Jamie.”</p><p>“Dani.”</p><p>“Look, if you don’t want to tell me, I can just--” Dani stops. Even in jest, the idle threat of hanging up on Jamie seems too raw a concept. “Never mind. I know it’s private, I shouldn’t--”</p><p>“Not sure where we were,” Jamie says quietly. Dani pulls up short mid-word. Jamie smiles. “One of those, y’know, where it doesn’t much matter. Think it might’ve been in the shop--if the shop had a bed--which, jot that down, not a bad idea.”</p><p>“A terrible idea,” Dani corrects in a voice just this side of breathless. Jamie laughs. </p><p>“Have you ever had that dream, where you’re...so at home with someone, like you’ve known ‘em forever, but it’s also the first time they’ve ever...”</p><p>“Yes.” She’s quick tonight, like she’s hanging on every syllable. Jamie can picture her in the apartment, eyes closed, phone to her ear, trying to transplant herself from Vermont to this hotel room through sheer force of will.</p><p>“You were kissing me. And it was...it made me forget, in the dream, how far away you are. You’re the only person I’ve ever met, you know, who makes dream kissing look worthless in comparison.”</p><p>Dani exhales shakily, something that might be a laugh or a sigh. Jamie tries to imagine her leaning against the kitchen counter, tries to find a fixed image that will place Dani within reach. </p><p>“You were kissing me, and--” Dreams are difficult, she thinks. Hard to grasp tightly enough to transfer into another person’s hands. In truth, it hadn’t been about the pieces so much as the sensations, the way she’d felt Dani’s hands everywhere at once, the way she’d felt Dani’s heart thundering against her own. “It’s...hard to explain, but--”</p><p>“Try,” Dani says. Heat tightens low in Jamie’s chest, traveling south. She swallows. </p><p>“It was that feeling, right? That feeling of you just...all over. The way you get when you wake in the middle of the night and you’re not really moving with purpose, you’re just...needing to touch. And be touched. When you realize you’re kissing me around the time I realize my hands are sliding up your shirt, and we’re both just sort of...dunno. Magnetic?”</p><p>A noise over the line, a hitch in Dani’s breath. <em>That</em>, Jamie almost says. <em>That’s</em> the sound Dani makes whenever it happens, with Jamie’s fingers teasing along the ridges of her spine, with legs sliding together beneath the rustle of sheets. That little hitch that tells her Dani is awake enough to be aware, at least, of her own desire.</p><p>“Is that...all?” Dani asks, and Jamie realizes she’s been silent too long, lost in the memory of dream. She shakes her head, though Dani can’t see, trying to pull herself back into the driver’s seat. There’s something in Dani’s voice, a mild disappointment in the idea that this might be over already, and Jamie suddenly wonders if missing her voice had been her entire reason for calling.</p><p>“Where are you?”</p><p>Dani hesitates. “On...the couch.”</p><p>“Comfortable?”</p><p>Dani almost sounds suspicious when she says, “I mean...it’s the couch.”</p><p>Jamie laughs. There’s a chaotic energy to her resolve, the kind she only finds after a night of drinking or a night with Dani plastered across her skin. </p><p>“You missed me, you said,” she points out when Dani says nothing. “Missed me how?”</p><p>“Jamie...” </p><p>“I told you mine,” Jamie points out. “If you think for a second I could have a dream like that and wake up not missing you, you’re--”</p><p>“It’s...hard,” Dani says, almost sheepishly. “Not having you here. Don’t normally need to talk so much about it, when I can just...I mean, you know what it’s like.”</p><p>That energy seems to expand in her, that hot pulse of eagerness threading beneath her exhaustion and hoisting it bodily aside. Jamie sits up, shifts until she’s reclining against the headboard. </p><p>“It’s easier if I can picture exactly where you’re...so, again: are you comfortable on the couch?”</p><p>Dani makes a small sound, then: “No.”</p><p>“Are you tired?”</p><p>“No, I’m--”</p><p>“I think,” Jamie says gently, “you’re tired enough to go to bed.”</p><p>“Jamie--” There’s confusion in Dani’s voice, and a very thin thread of excitement. “I don’t...”</p><p>“Take me with you,” Jamie says, and holds her breath. Dani makes a sound she can’t decipher, and then there is fumbling, the sound of footsteps padding thousands of miles away. “Dani?”</p><p>“In bed,” Dani says a moment later, sounding out of breath, jittery, like she’s on the verge of laughing. “This is--this is silly, isn’t it--”</p><p>Jamie doesn’t think it’s silly. Thinks it’s the opposite, really--that anything with the power to make her feel close to Dani from this huge of a distance should be venerated. </p><p>“You miss me?”</p><p>She waits for Dani to laugh again, to shrug it off: <em>It’s fine, Jamie, it’s been barely a day, I’m okay, think I’ll just go to--</em></p><p>“So much,” Dani says softly. “I don’t...know how to...” </p><p>“You do,” Jamie breathes. “You absolutely do. I can help.”</p><p>It’s like picking up a new hobby, she thinks, or a new habit: awkward, at first, until you get moving. Until you get the rhythm of it. Dani sounds nervous, uncertain, but once she’s off the starting block--once she’s hit her stride--</p><p>“I miss you, too,” Jamie says in a low, urgent voice. “Let me help.”</p><p>***</p><p>All at once, the past six years seem to fall away. Six years of learning Jamie inside and out, six years of friendship mounting to the greatest love story she can imagine, six years of her lips on Jamie’s skin, Jamie’s hands tracing every line of her, the pair of them writing something glorious together--and in this moment, it all seems to vanish. Dani is left here: sitting up in bed with a phone to her ear, with Jamie saying quietly, “Let me help, Dani.”</p><p>The shiver that drags up her spine is nearly enough to end this here and now, her hands trembling too hard to follow through with anything Jamie might say. She swallows hard. </p><p>“If,” Jamie adds, “you want. If you don’t, I’ll just stay on the line until you fall asleep. Up to you.”</p><p><em>Up to you</em>, every time. <em>Up to you</em>, the first time she’d invited Dani to share her shower, the first time she’d teased a hand beneath Dani’s skirt at the drive-in theater, the first time she’d kissed Dani in a bathroom at the local bar. <em>Up to you</em>, when Dani had wondered if people really got anything out of blindfolds (yes), when Dani had wondered if people really got anything out of ties around their wrists (yes), when Dani had wondered if there was any merit to strap-ons (the biggest yes of her life). </p><p><em>Up to you</em>, now and always, because Jamie is six years into this thing and still looking at Dani like she can’t quite believe her luck. Still looking at Dani like she still can’t believe they’d gone from playing a silly game for the benefit of Dani’s whole family and wound up a family of their own. </p><p>“Keep--” Her voice is barely anything, airy and indistinct. She clears her throat. “Keep talking, okay? Tell me more about the dream.”</p><p>“Isn’t much more to it,” Jamie says, “except the feel of it. The <em>feel</em> of waking up to your hands. Your hips. Your mouth on my skin. There’s nothing like it, Dani. Nothing at all.”</p><p>She closes her eyes, lets Jamie’s voice play over her senses. Jamie sounds awake now, rapt, as though she can see everything Dani is doing in the privacy of this bedroom.</p><p>“What are you--” Jamie stops herself. Laughs a little. “Tacky, maybe, but I still want to know.”</p><p>“Wearing,” Dani guesses, smiling. “Your shirt.”</p><p>It hadn’t helped much. She hadn’t thought it would, exactly, but hadn’t been able to stop herself from grabbing the most recently-worn of Jamie’s flannels from the back of a chair. She’s been turning her face against her own shoulder all evening, closing her eyes and inhaling Jamie as though the scent alone could call Jamie back. </p><p>“What else?”</p><p>Not much, and Dani says so. There doesn’t seem a point to pants within the apartment, she often tells Jamie, especially in the summer. Bad enough she’s forced to wear them out in the world, where the air is sticky and the sun beats down without remorse. In the apartment, she cares little for decorum, little for anything except the comfort of air conditioning against her bare legs. </p><p>Jamie sounds approving when she says, “Ready for bed, then.” Innocuous words, Dani thinks with another shiver, but she can picture Jamie leaning forward as she says them, her eyes stormy. </p><p>“Do you want to talk?” Jamie asks. “Or do you want to listen?”</p><p>Dani makes a helpless sound, almost a whine, frozen between the questions with an embarrassment she can’t explain. This is Jamie, her best friend in the world, the person she trusts with her life, and this is still so <em>different</em>. The idea of Jamie set ahead in time, Jamie in a room she can’t see, talking to her about dreams and what she’s wearing and going to bed is just--</p><p>“Put the phone on speaker,” Jamie says, a calm, easy instruction Dani finds herself following on instinct. “Set it on my pillow. Lay back on yours.”</p><p>Dani exhales, does what she’s told. The room is suddenly oppressive in its warmth, the sheets blissfully cool against her legs. Jamie’s shirt is heavy, sliding against her skin as she stretches out, lays with one hand on Jamie’s pillow, the other on her own stomach. </p><p>“I don’t--”</p><p>“Listen,” Jamie says, her voice clear as day. If Dani closes her eyes, she can wipe some of the weird out of the situation; it’s just Jamie lying beside her, head propped on her hand, watching Dani with affection. With open, unimpeded want. </p><p>“I’m there,” Jamie says, as if she can read Dani’s mind. “Close your eyes, listen to my voice. You hear me.”</p><p>“Yes.” Dani breathes in, breathes out, steadying herself. </p><p>“You feel the bed under you. Feel the pillow under your head, the mattress soft at your back.”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>“And you hear me. Right beside you, where I always am. Where I belong. I do, don’t I? Belong there with you.”</p><p>The nerves are beginning to fade already, the distance looping in on itself word by word as Jamie speaks. With her eyes closed, she can imagine Jamie pushing a little nearer, the bed dipping under her weight as she scoots just close enough to drink in Dani’s warmth. Not quite enough to touch. </p><p>“You can’t sleep,” Jamie says, as if narrating a pleasant story. “Too wound up. Been too long. Days.”</p><p>Dani nods, forgetting for a second she is alone. “Yes,” she repeats, fingers trailing the buttons of Jamie’s stolen shirt. How many times has Jamie worn this very thing out to the mall, or around the house. How many times has Dani popped open these same buttons, kissing Jamie, guiding Jamie down onto the couch, against the wall--</p><p>“You can’t sleep,” Jamie says. “And I’m right here. So tell me what you need.”</p><p>***</p><p>She expects Dani to laugh nervously here, to beg off at last. Expects anything but for that hitch in Dani’s breath again, the soft sound of cloth rustling over the speaker. </p><p>“Kiss me,” Dani breathes, that tinge of embarrassment still present, but already so much less. Jamie smiles. </p><p>“Your neck, maybe.” She can feel Dani’s skin under her lips, if she tries--Dani soft after a shower, clean and so fundamentally <em>her, </em>it drives Jamie nearly out of her mind to imagine it now. “It’s just me in that bed, pulling aside the collar of my shirt--<em>my shirt</em>, you said--”</p><p>“Smells like you,” Dani says, no hint of apology in her voice. Jamie leans her head back against the pillows and sighs.</p><p>“Touch your fingers to your neck. Where you most want me.”</p><p>“That isn’t--” Dani swallows audibly. “Where I most want you.”</p><p>A sharp coil of that insistent heat again, curling itself low in Jamie’s stomach. She rolls her eyes toward the ceiling, grinning. </p><p>“That would be too quick. You can’t sleep on <em>quick</em>.” It’s true. Dani has this habit, she’s learned, of needing to be built up. Of needing Jamie to follow through in the event she comes too fast, her body’s way of saying, <em>again, again, it’s not enough. </em>It took almost a year for her embarrassment to fade, for her to stop apologizing when she’d chase a nearly instant orgasm with bruising kisses, with hands pulling Jamie close again before she could even catch her breath. </p><p>“Right,” Dani says softly. Jamie closes her eyes, pictures Dani in their bed, trailing the tips of her fingers across her neck. Pictures her pressing a little harder in all the spots Jamie can’t resist--just under her jaw, along the jump of her pulse, that spot just at the front of her throat where Jamie can’t help nipping. </p><p>“How does it feel?”</p><p>“Too little,” Dani says, her voice distant. “Too little, but...but if I try, I can...”</p><p>“Feel me,” Jamie supplies. She is, she realizes, mirroring precisely the same action on her own skin, her nails dragging light heat down the side of her neck. She digs in a little harder at the joint of shoulder, where Dani sometimes loses track of time sucking unexpectedly hot marks. She can feel Dani now, one hand pulling back Jamie’s hair, the other stroking across Jamie’s cheek as her mouth works against tight skin. </p><p>“I don’t know if--” <em>This is working</em>, she thinks Dani wants to say, but there’s a hiccup behind the words that suggests she’s wrong. </p><p>“Lower,” Jamie says, keeping her voice level, keeping her voice soft. Dani is still testing the bounds of this idea, her rational mind still pushing hard against her physical desire. She has not yet found the rhythm, has not picked up the beat behind Jamie’s instructions. “Just to tease. Just along the top of your chest, where the buttons open. It’s just me, Dani. Kissing lightly. Can you feel it? Can you picture--”</p><p>***</p><p>She can. Maybe because her eyes are still closed, maybe because Jamie sounds so certain, but she can feel Jamie’s breath along her skin. Jamie’s lips, tracing with maddening gentleness at the base of her throat, along the jut of her collarbone. She follows the path with her hand, allowing her nails to bite into skin just enough to remind her of Jamie’s teeth, Jamie reminding her of how good it can be to wait. </p><p>“Too little,” she says again, the jump of nerves in her belly feeling so much more like excitement now. She waits for Jamie to laugh--and, instead, hears Jamie inhale. </p><p>“Unbutton. Slowly. I want to spend the whole night with you.”</p><p>She shudders against the mattress, her fingers tripping to fall in line with a command so soft, it might as well be Jamie’s own hand. She hears herself counting the buttons out loud and almost laughs, but Jamie makes an approving sound.</p><p>“Leave the last two for now.”</p><p>She leans back into the pillows, the chill of the air pulling her skin tight. “Cold.”</p><p>“You won’t be,” Jamie promises. “I can see you. That sweet red flush you get when you’ve been kissed too long, the way it runs down your neck, spreads across your chest. You only get it when I’m making it last.”</p><p>Dani squeezes a hand around the hem of the shirt, wishing for Jamie’s hand, for Jamie’s hair between her fingers as she pulls Jamie’s head down her chest. She can so clearly imagine Jamie’s head bowed between her breasts, her tongue drawing a long stroke from collar to sternum. </p><p>“You don’t even need me,” Jamie says quietly, sounding amused. “I can hear you going on without me.”</p><p>“Not,” Dani mutters, though she has cupped one breast and is moving her palm in slow, restless circles. It’s too easy to picture Jamie laughing against her, Jamie’s mouth open around a tight nipple. Jamie’s tongue rolling, stroking, her breath soothingly warm against chilled skin--</p><p>“You’re already there,” Jamie goes on, not sounding the least bit bothered by the idea of Dani moving on ahead. “Can hear it in your voice. Tell me.”</p><p>“I--” Her hand is Jamie’s hand. It’s the only way she can explain it, the only way she can accept it. “It’s...you. Just you.”</p><p>“What’m I doing?” Jamie’s voice taking on that slow, easy quality of late nights, where she stops trying to enunciate and lets her accent take the wheel. Dani’s never told her, but this is the most attractive of all Jamie’s variants: the version of her which trims letters and words with reckless disregard, the version on whose lips Dani’s name is impossibly sacred. </p><p>“You tell me,” she says, needing suddenly to hear Jamie explain it all. Needing to hear Jamie’s sleep-roughened voice wrap around her name, around any word she's willing to offer up to Dani tonight, like a language designed for the two of them alone.</p><p>“One hand,” Jamie says with softly assertive pleasure, “has yours. Above your head, against the pillow.”</p><p>Dani moves into place, her left hand brushing the pillowcase as she imagines Jamie’s fingers between her own, her palm pressing down. </p><p>“Other hand,” Jamie says, “squeezing gently. So gently. Thumb, tracing circles. You feel it?”</p><p>“Yes.” Jamie’s hand on her skin, warm on warm. Jamie’s thumb dragging a slow arc around, around, sensitive skin growing ever tighter under the pad as it slides across in a firm stroke. </p><p>“Hands only?” Jamie asks, offering the narrative up, and Dani makes a soft sound in her throat. “Mouth, then. Kissing slow, across the other breast. Keep your hand above your head. Just imagine.”</p><p>She can’t <em>not</em> imagine, she finds. Can’t <em>not</em> feel the press of Jamie’s tongue, the gentle scrape of her teeth, her mouth hot and searching for that spot, that pressure, that bite that will arch Dani off the mattress. </p><p>She hears herself make a noise, high and sharp, and Jamie is chuckling from the pillow beside her head, from the spot against her breast where she licks, pulling Dani into her mouth. It is dreamlike, Dani thinks as her fingers pinch, aware that this is real, that Jamie is not, and still--Jamie is the most solid thing in the room. </p><p>“Lower?” Jamie offers, a jump of desire in the single word. Dani is nodding, wordless, even as she pinches a little too hard, hears the breath hiss past her lips. Jamie swears very softly. “It’s--harder than I thought.”</p><p>“Talking me through?” Dani wonders. Her imagination is surging on ahead, picturing what little pressure it would take against Jamie’s shoulders to coax her down the bed. She rolls her hips against nothing, imagining Jamie settling between her thighs, Jamie’s smile silver against her stomach. </p><p>“Behaving myself,” Jamie says in that low rolling way she has at midnight after two cigarettes and a glass of wine, after an evening out with the toe of Dani’s boot tracing up the leg of her trousers under the table. Dani groans, picturing Jamie from that goodnight photo, the careless tumble of her hair, the smudged quality of her eyeliner. </p><p>“Why,” she gasps, dragging a hand slowly down the plane of her belly, liking the way the still-buttoned shirt rubs the back of her hand as she sinks lower, “are you even trying?”</p><p>“Chivalry?” Jamie suggests. </p><p>“Boring,” Dani insists, scraping her nails across the jut of one hipbone. “Much more fun...together...”</p><p>***</p><p><em>Far be it from me</em>, Jamie thinks hazily, punching the speaker button on her own phone and letting it drop to the pillow. “Still hear me?”</p><p>Dani makes a thin noise of assent, and Jamie bites back a groan. </p><p>“Charging on ahead again?”</p><p>“Waiting,” Dani says. A pause, then: “See?”</p><p>Jamie turns in time to see the message come through, her hand shaking as she taps it open to find a photo taken from an obviously intimate angle. Dani’s hand tucked just under the slack lines of Jamie’s shirt, her fingers spread across the bellybutton piercing she’d gotten on a whim two summers ago. This time, the groan breaks through.</p><p>“Oh, you’re bringing an unfair advantage to the table.”</p><p>“Don’t have to,” Dani says, not sounding the least bit ashamed of herself. “Kind of like it this way. Just listening to you...wind me up...”</p><p>Jamie drags in a breath even as she grips the hem of her tank top, wrenches it higher. Her hips are moving without permission, as though Dani is curled beside her, dropping kisses along her ribs as her hand slides low. </p><p>“Not just you,” she says, mirroring Dani’s hand from the photo on her own skin. “This is...”</p><p>“A lot,” Dani agrees. It doesn’t quite cover it, Jamie thinks. A lot is Dani’s laugh against her neck, Dani’s hand curled at the base of her skull. A lot is Dani’s kiss on a spring day, reminding her of how good her fortune can be. This is more than a lot. This, sprawled on two separate beds on two separate continents, hands placed as though formed by the same sculptor on identical works of art, is a brand new form of intimacy she’d thought they couldn’t find after so many years. </p><p>“I want,” Jamie says, even as Dani is murmuring, “Jamie.”</p><p>That unique matching of desires, that unique pulse of equal give and take. Jamie shuts her eyes, lets Dani’s labored breaths take her out of this room, placing her in their bed, between Dani’s legs, her weight comfortably pressing Dani into the sheets. </p><p>“Together,” she says in a voice like gravel, and Dani groans. “Slide down. It’s me.”</p><p>“It’s you,” Dani agrees. Jamie lets her hand slide into shorts, waits for that telltale whimper that tells her Dani has allowed contact for the first time. “Tell me. About the dream.”</p><p>“This is better,” Jamie says, fingers tracing mindless little circles against herself. “This is so much better.”</p><p>“Why?” Something jerks behind the word, Dani’s voice breaking. Jamie imagines her pulling back, trying to be softer, trying to make it last. </p><p>“Because it’s--because you’re--”</p><p>“Jamie,” she says, “<em>talk</em> to me.”</p><p>Jamie has been trying to keep herself on an even keel, to keep from stepping off the edge into something too deep, too dirty. Romance, she’s thought, is pretty and poignant and everything Dani deserves. </p><p>Dani, who is groaning, “Jamie, tell me how to--tell me how you’d--<em>talk</em>, Jamie.”</p><p>There is sex, and there is love, and somewhere in the middle, there is this: thighs slick, fingers trembling, the sound of Dani’s ragged pants over a phone line. Jamie makes a hopeless sound low in her chest, imagines pushing Dani’s hips hard against the mattress with both hands. </p><p>“I want to hold you,” she hears herself say, the words spilling recklessly past her lips as her fingers trace and tease. “Want to hold you down. Want to pull you to the edge of the bed. Legs over my shoulders, my knees carpet-burnt. Want to hold you flat with my hands and taste you.”</p><p>Dani’s voice is all tremor, no words. Jamie waits for an indication she is going too far, spilling past sex and into--</p><p>“Fuck,” she hears Dani groan, and it’s like crashing headlong into all loss of control. </p><p>“You feel me,” she says, and it’s not a question this time. “You feel me, and you’re spreading for me, and you’re so wet. So wet, I can’t--I’m sinking into you, tongue on your--fuck, Dani, <em>fuck</em>, I can’t--”</p><p>“Slow down,” Dani gasps. “Slow down and <em>tell me</em>. Say it. Tell me what you--”</p><p>***</p><p>Jamie’s voice is trembling, and that’s almost enough. Jamie’s voice, rough around the edges, saying, “Fuck, Dani, I can’t--”</p><p>“Please,” she hears herself say, even as her fingers are dancing, stroking, pressing harder. “I need to know. I need to be able to feel you.”</p><p>It isn’t real, if it’s not Jamie. It isn’t real, and she can’t <em>get </em>there, if it’s not Jamie. </p><p>“Feel me, then,” Jamie says--almost commands. Almost. There’s that tremor in her voice like she’s holding something back, that strained sense of keeping one hand on the guardrail at all times. Jamie’s always been like this, she thinks: careful. Just careful enough, even letting Dani all the way in, not to step over some invisible line. </p><p>“Jamie, I need--I need--”</p><p>“You need me inside,” Jamie says, the words rolling together. “You need me to fill you deep, you need me to lick you clean, you need to ride me until your eyes roll back, and I <em>want</em> it, Dani. I want to feel it all. I want this to be you I’m curling into, want you spilling down my wrist as you clench around me, as you tighten--as you--”</p><p>She makes a low helpless sound, and Dani casts her head back, thrusts her own fingers to match the curve and twist of Jamie’s voice around the words. She almost can’t make them out, almost can’t pick one from the next, and it doesn’t matter. Jamie’s voice is enough. Jamie groaning her name is enough. </p><p>She’s gripping the pillow in one hand, her body spasming into the other, and she can hear Jamie saying, “<em>Fuck, fuck, fuck” </em>like a mantra a million miles away. She pictures Jamie clenching her thighs tight around her own hand, hips twisting, the sheets kicked off the hotel bed, and she feels herself clench harder in response. Feels herself go over, turning her face into Jamie’s pillow to muffle her cries. </p><p>She lays curled toward Jamie’s side of the bed for a long minute--forever, it seems--as her breath slowly levels back to normalcy. Jamie’s voice, distant, coming up from between the pillows:</p><p>“You there? Dani?”</p><p>“Yes,” she breathes, her chest hitching. Her fingers ache, her hand soaked through. She curls a light fist, holds it between trembling thighs, imagining Jamie’s head resting against taut muscle, Jamie’s mouth trailing kisses along her skin. </p><p>“Too much?” Jamie asks. The phone is wedged out of place, the speaker pressed into the pillowcase. Dani shifts her clean hand, picks it up, sets it beside her mouth. </p><p>“What do you--are you asking if that was <em>bad</em>?” </p><p>“I heard you,” Jamie says, amusement tinging her voice. “Could tell it wasn’t <em>bad</em>. No, I’m just--you’re okay? That was...”</p><p>“Intense,” Dani sighs, nuzzling into the pillow. If her eyes don’t open, she doesn’t have to remember Jamie isn’t actually in this bed, gazing at her with fond, nervous anticipation. “Is the word you want, I think. Intense.”</p><p>“Good intense?” Jamie presses. She sounds exhausted, but Dani is pretty sure she’s smiling.</p><p>“You tell me,” she says, and takes one more photo.</p><p>She hears Jamie drop the phone. </p><p>***</p><p>Jamie is beginning to think it’s a curse, sleeping badly in luxurious hotel rooms. A truly unfair curse of her own making.</p><p>Her own making--and Dani Clayton’s. Dani who, if there was any justice in the world, would be in this bed as the morning light spills across rumpled sheets. Dani who, if there was any justice in the world, would be backing up a rather risqué photo sent last night with real life now. </p><p>Neither had hung up, preferring to doze off to the sounds of the other breathing, and the last thing Jamie remembers is Dani saying, “I love the way you say things, you know.”</p><p>“What kinds of things?” Jamie had mumbled, trying to turn the pillow beneath her head into Dani’s chest through the magic of <em>because I miss her</em>. The pillow, stubbornly, remained stuffed with foam. Dani, stubbornly, remained in Vermont. </p><p>“Anything, really,” Dani said through the fog of oncoming sleep. “My name, mostly. And fuck...and tongue...”</p><p><em>I’ll make a list</em>, Jamie had thought as sleep coiled around her at last. It had been a solid attempt, she thinks now, at genuine rest. Her body had certainly believed itself prepared, between the exhaustion of the day’s activities and the gorgeous quality of bonelessness from Dani’s call. She’d sunk deep into the mattress, let her brain switch off, become little more than a starfish of limbs and soft snores--</p><p>--until the knock at eleven. </p><p>“What?” she groans into the pillows, wondering if she’s somehow fallen back in time and Judy O’Mara is waiting with perfectly-brewed tea on the other side. </p><p>“You planning on lazing about all day?” Owen asks. “Hannah’d like to see you before the evening can tear you asunder.”</p><p>“No one,” Jamie calls back, groping for her phone and finding it--unsurprisingly--dead, “is being <em>torn</em> tonight, Owen Sharma. I have a lady to get back to, lest you forget.”</p><p>Dani, who is likely still fast asleep, probably looking exactly as she had in last night’s photo: Jamie’s shirt barely doing its job, her underwear tucked half under the sheets, her skin rosy in the lamplight. Jamie’s mouth goes very suddenly dry, Jamie’s body very suddenly awake. </p><p>“Go away,” she calls. “I need a shower.”</p><p>“You showered fourteen hours ago!”</p><p>“Yeah, and then I got dirty again, didn’t I?” <em>He has no fucking idea. </em>“Go away, Owen, or I’m telling Hannah you threw up a perfectly good cheesecake last night.”</p><p>“I only threw up <em>some</em> of the cheesecake,” Owen says patiently. “That you know of.”</p><p>He refuses to leave until she promises she really is taking a shower, and she really will be quick about it. That last is questionable, she thinks as she plugs her phone into the bathroom outlet and steps under unreasonably hot water. She is in little mood to be a person this morning--unless that person is one who might coax Dani to say her name with breathless desire again. </p><p><em>Two days</em>, she reminds herself. <em>Two bloody days away from a woman I’ve not been apart from in years, so what </em>is<em> this? </em></p><p>One of those spells, she suspects--the ones that come on strong and hot, and with very little warning. They might go months without sex, the easy nature of hands held, kisses exchanged, conversation crossing the pillows more than enough for both of them. And then, without cause, without either quite knowing why, this might happen: this sense of <em>need </em>which rises from unknown depths and drags them both into bed for days, even weeks, at a time. </p><p>Inconvenient, that this might hit <em>now</em>. Inconvenient, that it couldn’t wait until Jamie was home, Dani at one-hundred-percent fitness, the two of them able to close the shop for a week and forsake clothes and human contact until the urge expends itself. </p><p>She finds herself leaning against the counter, a toothbrush hanging lazily from her mouth, her eyes fixed on Dani’s photo. Dani doesn’t do this often--isn’t particularly fond of her own image on a screen, save for what it does to Jamie--but the rare event of a photo like this can undo Jamie’s focus for days. She remembers a conference the first year they’d opened the shop, spending twelve hours in an auditorium while salesmen droned on, and how Dani had sent the first of these photos with an intoxicating lack of shyness. </p><p><em>Only fair</em>, thinks Jamie now, letting the towel wrapped around her body loosen slightly. Just enough, she thinks, to give Dani a welcome good morning when she finally rouses in an hour or four. </p><p>“You took,” Owen says in the lobby, when she finally stumbles down, “forever.”</p><p>“I took half an hour, don’t be dramatic.”</p><p>“Hannah--”</p><p>“Knows a normal person doesn’t tackle lunch until at least noon, what is your <em>hurry</em>?” She tips her head back, frowning. He doesn’t even look hungover, precisely. “You’re being weird. Why’re you being so weird?”</p><p>He rubs his nose. “I just don’t want to be late.”</p><p>“For Hannah. Your fiancée. Who knows all too well where you’ve been, and what your night likely entailed.” She squints. </p><p>He sags, letting his arms hang as his back bows him nearly double. “All right! I slept like shit without her, didn’t I? You know what it’s like, you get all...used to someone there, breathing, and when you wake up by yourself, it’s...”</p><p>She’s laughing. He shakes his head.</p><p>“I know, I know, get it all out now. I wasn’t planning on letting <em>her</em> know.”</p><p>“No, I’m not--I’m not laughing at you.” She pauses, considering. “Right. Little bit laughing at you. But mostly, I just...think this is how you know? When you can’t go a day without their smile. It’s...”</p><p>“Co-dependent,” Owen groans. “Pitiful.”</p><p>“Well, yes. But some things, you just learn to make your peace with.” Time is short, she doesn’t add, because the sun is high and Owen is grinning through the embarrassment, and why sour a glorious day? True, though. Time is short. You don’t always get a say in how much is granted, and even if she gets Dani for years, yet, for years and years and decades to come, it’ll never be enough. The moments have to add up <em>now</em>. The nights spent listening to Dani breathe are <em>now</em>, and they are beautiful, and there’s nothing she wants more than to keep them as close and as long as she can. </p><p>Owen, she suspects, feels the same. Nothing wrong with it. Something, in fact, lovely about it. </p><p>“M’glad you finally got your shit together, you know.” She slaps him once on the shoulder, grinning. “She’s good for you.”</p><p>“She’s the <em>best</em>,” he says weakly. “Just the absolute best.”</p><p>“Let’s not keep her waiting.”</p><p>***</p><p>Dani sleeps well, and Dani sleeps soundly, and Dani wakes at seven-thirty with lightning in her bones. For a moment, eyes closed, body thrumming with the memory of last night, it’s easy to pretend she can reach over and close a hand over Jamie. Easy to imagine rolling over, sliding a leg over Jamie’s hip, pulling her close. </p><p>Her body gives an agreeable little pulse, her stomach warm with the memory of Jamie’s voice groaning, “<em>Fuck</em>” with soft repetition. </p><p>But Jamie, of course, is still in London. Jamie, of course, is probably up and about her actual day by now, killing time until the evening’s party. </p><p><em>Home tomorrow</em>, she reminds herself. Jamie will be on an early flight, performing that time travel trick all over again in reverse, winning back the hours stolen from her on the trip across the ocean. Jamie will be here before she knows it, and she will be exhausted, but she will smile and kiss Dani and it will be like she never left at all.</p><p>“One day,” Dani mutters. “Perfectly doable.”</p><p>Her phone is on its last legs, begging for a charge. She sits up, buttoning Jamie’s shirt once more, gazing with some bemusement at sheets that had been clean when she’d settled into them last night. It seems pointless to change them now--she suspects, regardless of Jamie’s weariness tomorrow, they’ll only be ruined again before long. </p><p>One day. She can do one day, even with her skin hot and her legs trembling. She can do one day. It’s no different from Jamie going out of town on a supply run, Dani left behind to man the shop or loiter around the apartment. No different at all. </p><p><em>In fact...</em> She can make a game of it. Jamie’s off having fun, certainly, but there’s no such thing as too much, and it could be...interesting, to amuse herself this way. Interesting, to see how far Jamie might allow herself to be pushed over the course of the day.</p><p>Still clad in no more than Jamie’s shirt and a fresh pair of underwear, she moves slowly around the kitchen, switching on the coffee maker, dropping bread into the toaster. Her phone is merrily charging away in the bedroom, not quite functional enough for what she has planned. </p><p>Breakfast, first. Then she’ll greet Jamie properly and get the day started right.</p><p>***</p><p>“You don’t look rested,” Hannah says, kissing Jamie’s cheek and gesturing toward the table at which she’s evidently been waiting a while. “I told him not to bother you so early.”</p><p>Owen shoots her a warning look, his eyes pleading with her not to point out how lonely he’d been, left on his own for only a few hours. Jamie grins. </p><p>“Eh, I don’t sleep well in hotels. Though I’ll thank you to <em>pretend</em>, at least, like I’m not the walking dead, Hannah.”</p><p>“Problems with dreams again?” Hannah asks mildly, though if there was truly a god watching over gardeners with sardonic friends, she’d have forgotten that little incident by now. Jamie screws up her face, sticks out her tongue.</p><p>“May have gotten used to sleeping <em>with</em> another human being over the past six goddamn years. And those pillows are...scratchy.”</p><p>A dim memory of pressing herself into those pillows, her entire body aching for another body in that bed. She averts her eyes, pretends to look for a server in the gentle hubbub of the cafe. </p><p>“How was your evening?” Hannah is asking Owen when she finally flags down a young woman with the power to bring water and a strong tea. “Good having everyone in one place again?”</p><p>“It was lovely,” Owen says, as though <em>lovely</em> is really the word for alcohol and rowdy jokes about the most phallic of vegetables. Jamie snorts, digging her phone from her pocket and checking her texts. </p><p>One, from Dani. <em>Well, good morning to you, too. </em>Jamie glances briefly at the photo from this morning, imagines Dani rolling over and opening her eyes to that picture and sighing. A light flush creeps up the back of her neck, her lips pulling into a goofy smile.</p><p>“Say hello to Miss Clayton for us,” Hannah says, without missing a beat. </p><p>“Tell her we miss her,” Owen adds. “Shame she couldn’t make it out, really. She’ll be at the wedding?”</p><p>“Wouldn’t miss it for all the colds,” Jamie tells him distractedly, thumbing out a quick message in response: <em>wanted to make sure you knew you were sorely missed, is all</em>.</p><p><em>And that’s all you could manage?</em> Dani replies. Jamie resists the urge to press a hand to her mouth, to grin like an idiot. </p><p>
  <em>didn’t want to do too much damage first thing. </em>
</p><p>“She misses you both,” she adds out loud, setting the phone facedown on the table. “September can’t come soon enough.”</p><p>“Oh, don’t say that,” Hannah sighs. “I don’t understand how there’s still so much to do. They keep asking after little changes to the table settings, it’s getting out of hand--”</p><p>“I told you I could take care of it,” Owen tells her. “You don’t have to worry about a thing, love, I’ve got it all sorted--”</p><p>Jamie is only half-listening, making the appropriate <em>mmhmm</em> and <em>sure</em> noises here and there as they banter over cutlery and dessert menus. Her phone buzzes, and she forces herself to wait a full ten seconds before picking it up, doing her best to look as idle as she flips open Dani’s next message.</p><p>A photo, in fact--Dani in the kitchen with a mug of probably-horrific coffee, perched on the counter. From this angle, there is no mistaking how little she wears beneath Jamie’s shirt. </p><p><em>still smell like me?</em> she asks, struggling against a smile. A beat, then:</p><p>
  <em>More like me now, really. </em>
</p><p>Jamie chokes, takes a hasty sip of water. <em>what</em>, she types, even as she’s nodding into the flow of conversation as it moves around her, <em>are your plans for the day?</em></p><p>Nothing for a moment, in which she rearranges her attention just enough to realize they are now discussing cake. One of Owen’s friends is whipping one up, a young woman with an incredible talent for buttercream frosting one would die for, evidently. </p><p>Buzz. Dani: <em>Thought I’d spend it wearing as little as possible and talking to you. </em></p><p>Another photo, this time of Dani leaning over, smiling so innocently, Jamie almost misses the extra button popped open. Almost. </p><p>
  <em>oh, this is going to get cruel fast. </em>
</p><p><em>I could stop</em>, Dani suggests. <em>Could just put on a hoodie and watch old movies, instead...</em></p><p><em>don’t even joke. </em>Jamie adds a hasty photo, a gentle blur around her pout. She shifts her expression back to normal in time for Hannah to turn away from kissing Owen’s cheek, reaching across the table to Jamie. </p><p>“So, tell us. What’s new with you? We’ve been so lost in wedding plans, it’s ridiculous how little we’ve been able to catch up.”</p><p>Grudgingly, Jamie sets her phone beside her teacup, readying herself for Proper Friend Time over Turned On Girlfriend. “Oh, y’know. Shop. America. The usual. We really haven’t been interesting in ages.”</p><p>“Could make it interesting,” Owen suggests helpfully. “Haven’t thought about kids at all? Pets? A ring, perhaps?” His eyebrows are doing a little dance, one she remembers all too well from nights spent tossing batter around the kitchen like they wouldn’t have to clean it all up an hour later. </p><p>“No,” she says, ticking off on her fingers, “no, and...yeah, maybe. Sometimes.”</p><p>He leans forward eagerly. “Wait, really? Any picked out? Got a plan?”</p><p>“Dear, let her speak,” Hannah says mildly, taking his hand with no sign at all of genuine exasperation. </p><p>The phone beside Jamie’s hand buzzes. She bites her tongue, resisting the urge to flip it over. </p><p>“Oh, I’m not going to be the one who proposes.”</p><p>Owen frowns. “Why not?”</p><p>Buzz. Jamie smiles harder. “You all do remember she <em>had</em> a fiancé once, yeah? How that all ended?”</p><p>“Right, but this is different, isn’t it? I mean.” He seems to be struggling to find a way to put it, his eyes veering to Hannah for help. “It’s you.”</p><p>“It is,” Jamie agrees, trying to look unaware of the fact that her phone has gone off two more times in quick succession. <em>God, get me to a bathroom. </em>“Sort of the point. It’s me, and it’s her, and it’s up to...both, I guess. Her, more’n me.”</p><p>“You don’t want to push,” Hannah guesses. Jamie snaps her fingers, points in her direction.</p><p>“Got it in one.”</p><p>The server is back with platters of sandwiches, and Jamie takes advantage of Owen leaping up to help settle everything on the table. Doing her best to look as though she isn’t trying to hide the phone, she taps into Dani’s thread. </p><p>A photo: Dani on the couch, a pillow behind her head, the shirt buttoned from the navel down. A message: <em>You know, I thought last night would help. </em></p><p>A photo: Dani sliding one hand into the shirt, the curve of her breast just visible under her splayed fingers. A message: <em>Seems to have had the opposite effect. </em></p><p><em>you</em>, Jamie types back, her fingers stumbling, <em>are killlling me. </em></p><p><em>Slowly, I hope. </em>Dani must just be sitting there, <em>waiting</em> on her. Dani genuinely does not seem to have plans that expand beyond this exquisite torture--and judging by her incredibly pleasant smile, she’s prepared to give it her all. </p><p>Dani Clayton is not exactly someone who half-asses a thing.</p><p>“All right?” Hannah asks. Jamie realizes there has been a plate in front of her for some time, untouched, while the others have begun swapping half and half to share. </p><p>“Excellent,” she says, as her phone buzzes again. She presses her legs together beneath the table, hating the very concept of social engagement. “Just. Beautiful day.”</p><p>***</p><p>Jamie sounds genuinely pained, her most recent message short and sweet: <em>at lunch. want you. bad combination.</em></p><p>A kinder girlfriend, Dani muses, might let that sit a while. Might allow Jamie some time with their friends, making pleasant conversation. A kinder girlfriend would put on some real clothes, go for a walk, maybe get the grocery shopping done for the week. </p><p>Most days, Dani thinks of herself as a fairly kind girlfriend. A fairly compassionate, attentive girlfriend, one who is attuned to Jamie’s particular body language and needs. One who knows all too well, therefore, that Jamie’s short, staccato messaging does not, in fact, mean she wants Dani to go away. </p><p><em>Pictures too much? </em>she asks, grinning. Several minutes go by before Jamie replies. </p><p>
  <em>not helping. but don’t stop. </em>
</p><p><em>That feels like a mixed message</em>, Dani tells her, and sends a perfectly normal selfie along: hair falling into her face, smile relaxed, nothing dirty in the least. She feels as though Jamie’s exhalation of relief is audible on the next message. </p><p>
  <em>Hannah is looking at me funny. </em>
</p><p><em>Tell her I miss her</em>, Dani says, because she does. Genuinely, she misses Hannah more than most things about England--the long nights spent just chatting with the Bly housekeeper while the kids slept, long after Jamie and Owen had gone on to their respective homes. Hannah had understood her almost immediately in ways very few people ever have. </p><p>A beat. Then a photo of Hannah and Owen, heads pressed together, hands entangled on the table amid a spread of sandwiches and glasses. </p><p>
  <em>they love you, they hope you’re well, and Owen says if you miss the wedding, he’ll cry. </em>
</p><p><em>He’ll cry anyway</em>, Dani points out. <em>It’s a wedding. </em></p><p>
  <em>have passed as much along, and he says “fair”.</em>
</p><p>Another photo, this time of Jamie leaning back in her chair, looking rumpled and charmingly exhausted. Dani presses a finger to the curve of her smile, shuts her eyes for a moment, tries to will herself into the empty seat beside Jamie’s sprawl. </p><p>
  <em>Feel bad how late I kept you up last night. You look wiped out. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>do i also look turned on, because that’s really the takeaway here. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>You don’t, actually. Guess that means I need to work harder. </em>
</p><p>She remembers Jamie once saying she’d have to step up her game, how Jamie had gone from engaging fake-girlfriend to so attentive, she’d nearly driven Dani mad in a single day. It’s really only fair to return the favor. </p><p>
  <em>How fast do you think we’d get into trouble, if I was there?</em>
</p><p>Jamie’s response is instant: <em>would never have left the goddamn hotel, if you were here. there’s a bed. and a shower. and a floor. </em></p><p>She closes her eyes, imagines Jamie beneath her on a carpeted floor, hands on Dani’s hips. The idea alone is intoxicating; the fact that she can remember a time not so long ago on their own bedroom floor, Jamie wearing a particular addition, rising to meet every roll of Dani’s hips as she lowered herself down with a gasp is--</p><p><em>You remember the time with the strap-on? The one that left rugburn all up your back from how hard I rode you? </em>It’s miraculously easy, sending the words over text. So much easier than it had been last night, trying to find voice for all the things she’d wanted from Jamie in the moment. </p><p>She waits, fingers toying with the band of her underwear, delighted when Jamie’s response finally comes through. </p><p>
  <em>fuck. </em>
</p><p>***</p><p>“You’re looking flushed,” Hannah points out. “Don’t tell me you’re picking up Dani’s bug.”</p><p>“No.” She clears her throat, shakes her head. “No, I’m fine. I’m great.”</p><p>Hannah is smiling. She does not particularly <em>like</em> when Hannah smiles that way at her, the expression of an older sister with a world-weary awareness of exactly what Jamie is doing on the other side of the table. </p><p>“Dani’s feeling better, then,” Hannah presses. Jamie glances once at the most recent message in that thread (<em>Been thinking about that night a lot. Been thinking about the wall, too--how nice it would be for you to--</em>) and finds she can’t entirely meet Hannah’s eyes. </p><p>“Perfectly. Yeah. She’s, uh. Kicked it at last.”</p><p>“Tell her to get over here,” Owen says, oblivious and teasing in equal measure. She’s got five hours to showtime.”</p><p>“It’s a seven-hour flight,” Jamie says dryly. He frowns. </p><p>“Well, she can be late. Go on, tell her how much we’d love to see her face--”</p><p><em>Face, </em>thinks Jamie, as her phone buzzes and an image of Dani’s hand fills the screen. The tips of her fingers have just vanished beneath the lace of underwear she only breaks out on special occasions, and Jamie, suddenly, <em>hates</em> England. <em>Right, yeah, her face. That’s what we’re thinking about just now. </em></p><p><em>thought you didn’t play without me</em>, she sends when she trusts her hand to find all the right letters. </p><p><em>This is playing with you</em>, Dani replies, and Jamie finds the air in this cafe has grown thin indeed. </p><p>***</p><p>She almost trips up on the next message--almost responds to the buzz, rather than the words on the screen. It’s such a near-miss, her eyes registering Hannah’s name instead of Jamie’s, that her stomach lurches. </p><p>
  <em>It’s very entertaining, watching her turn colors, you know. </em>
</p><p>She considers lying, considers saying she has absolutely no idea what Hannah is talking about. It seems pointless, as endeavors go. Hannah seems sometimes to know all. <em>I bet she thinks she’s being subtle. </em></p><p><em>Oh, terribly</em>, Hannah agrees. <em>As if anyone could miss her leg going absolutely spare under the table. </em></p><p>Dani laughs. She carefully selects Jamie again, sends, <em>Hannah thinks you’re having some trouble. Want to tell me about it? </em></p><p>
  <em>no trouble. just. thinking. </em>
</p><p><em>About bachelor parties and being such a good friend, right? </em>She shifts up on the couch, sends another photo. This is honestly more fun than she’d imagined. </p><p>***</p><p>This picture is the one that almost does it. This picture, taken as though Dani has propped the phone high on her stomach, giving a perfect view of knees bent, black lace, one hand draped almost thoughtlessly between spread thighs. </p><p><em>Make an excuse</em>, Jamie thinks desperately. <em>Any excuse to go back to the hotel, you’re going to absolutely lose your mind. </em></p><p><em>I thought you’d like a nice look at where I’m imagining you right now</em>, Dani informs her, the cadence of the neatly-typed words as pleasant as can be. </p><p>
  <em>Dani, swear to god, this is going to have serious consequences when i get a minute.  </em>
</p><p><em>Counting on it</em>, Dani replies, and then...nothing. Complete radio silence. Jamie resists the urge to lay her face against the table, sure her cheeks are neon, her hand itching to scroll to the top of the thread and take in every photo, every cheeky message, all over again.</p><p>“You’re very sweet,” Hannah says from over her water glass. “Half a decade in, it’s like watching spring chickens.”</p><p>"Thank you,” Jamie mutters. Owen raises an eyebrow. <br/>
<br/>
“What are we talking about?”</p><p>“We’re not,” Jamie tells him, downing her water in a single swallow. </p><p>Dani leaves her be for a while, leaves her hanging with the memory of <em>Counting on it</em>, of Dani’s hand resting right where Jamie’s mouth ought to be. She breathes in and out, quieting the riot of her blood as best she can with questions about the wedding, about Henry and the kids, about tonight’s event. </p><p>“Sure you’re not coming?” she presses Hannah hopefully. “A stag party is decidedly <em>not</em> just for gents anymore. Evidently.” </p><p>“It isn’t really my scene,” Hannah says, almost apologetic. “But Henry assures me it will be a lovely time.”</p><p>“Did Henry also have the kids help plan the thing?” Jamie asks, trying to imagine an event as planned by a seventeen-year-old Miles and his utterly unsociable uncle. It will be, she thinks, a complete disaster the likes of which one cannot miss. </p><p>“<em>I</em> helped plan the thing,” Owen says cheerfully. “Catering and all. His ideas were...charming, but ultimately not...best suited to me, I don’t believe.”</p><p>“What sort of ideas?”</p><p>“Well, for one, he almost invited Peter Quint.” Owen grimaces. “Something about bygones and roads to forgiveness and all that rubbish. I think he’s really taking the matter of amends seriously.”</p><p>“Amends?” Jamie repeats. “The man robbed him blind, what’s he got to make amends for?”</p><p>“It’s a principle, for him,” Hannah says, almost disgustedly. “To right all the wrongs of days gone by. Not that there’s a need. Not that Peter’s welcome anywhere, and I told him as much. Thank God Rebecca finally saw sense and made her way out of that glue trap.”</p><p>“Wouldn’t mind seeing Rebecca again,” Owen muses. “Though I suspect she was happy to rid herself of all the memories. Can’t imagine her setting foot back into the manor of her own free will.”</p><p>“The party is at the <em>manor</em>?” Jamie asks. “You’re kidding.”</p><p>“Cheapest venue available,” Owen says. “Sorry, guess I could have mentioned that earlier, saved you the hotel fare. I didn’t think you’d be interested in loitering over in Bly longer than you had to.”</p><p>“We don’t <em>all</em> hate the place,” she points out, grinning. He makes a face. </p><p>“I don’t <em>hate</em> it. It’s just...that thing they say, about how you can’t go home again? That’s Bly. Ever since Mum, ever since you all left, and we set off to make a life in Paris, it’s just...<em>weird</em>, thinking about being back there.”</p><p>“Paris.” Jamie raises a glass. “Next time, set the party in Paris. There’s a city.”</p><p>She’s breathing normally now, though the idea of Dani sprawled on their couch is firmly embedded in her mind. Still, no more texts for the remainder of the long lunch, and Jamie lets herself remember the old days--the days where this was just the norm of every afternoon, Owen in an apron, Hannah enjoying a break at the table, Jamie with dirt in her hair and gloves stuffed into her pocket. The Three Musketeers, for a time. Odd, how that all slips away. Odd, how you continue growing up and growing apart, even in adulthood. </p><p>She pushes back from the table, digging around for the right change in her pocket, when her phone buzzes. Distracted by the bill, she almost doesn’t realize until Hannah smoothly slides it across to her side and flips it over. </p><p>“Hey--I wouldn’t--”</p><p>Hannah--who, Jamie realizes, <em>knows her passcode somehow</em>, best change that before the day’s out--raises her eyebrows. Jamie winces. </p><p>“Okay, you can’t blame me, you made that bed and climbed right on in.”</p><p>“She,” Hannah says mildly, “has excellent taste in undergarments.”</p><p>“Sorry, what?” Owen asks, but Hannah is shifting the phone out of reach, passing it back into Jamie’s hand. </p><p>“You really can’t begrudge an old woman her curiosity.” </p><p>She looks very proud of herself, all things considered. </p><p>***</p><p>
  <em>Christ, you’re unfair sometimes. </em>
</p><p>Dani grins. Part of the fun of this whole experience has been the waiting--waiting to see how long it will take Jamie to see the next photo or message, waiting to see how she’ll handle each escalation. In this case, not especially well. </p><p>
  <em>I don’t suppose you're getting some downtime back in that big bed of yours. </em>
</p><p><em>don’t i fuckin wish. </em>She can all but hear the growl in Jamie’s voice, that unintentional rasp she gets when all she wants is a cigarette or Dani, and is being deprived of both. <em>in Owen’s fuckin car now, being carted off to Bly fuckin Manor. </em></p><p><em>You sound like you’re having a lovely day</em>, Dani informs her, like there isn’t a photo in Jamie’s phone involving roaming hands and Jamie’s shirt barely worth its purpose. A pause that goes on for five minutes, before Jamie offers:</p><p>
  <em>have to deal with a party. in a house. where i used to have you in every corner under cover of darkness. and you are laughing. </em>
</p><p><em>Oh, it wasn’t always dark</em>, Dani reminds her. She’s leaning against the bathroom sink, amused. Somehow, the knowledge that Jamie is going slowly mad all the way across the world is doing wonders for tempering her own pounding heart. </p><p>Though only so much. If Jamie were to walk through the door here and now, it wouldn’t take much effort at all to put Dani right back where she was yesterday. </p><p>She eyes the clock, adds, <em>What time is the party? </em></p><p>
  <em>six. dinner and drinks and who all knows what else. Owen keeps mentioning games. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Games can be fun. </em>
</p><p><em>not the ones he’ll want to play. </em>It’s too easy to imagine Jamie pouting in the passenger seat of Owen’s car, one knee drawn up to her chest, struggling to make conversation with half her attention. </p><p>Dani finds she’d rather like all of her attention. Not for long. Just enough to remind them both the suffering is mutual. </p><p>
  <em>Headphones?</em>
</p><p>She waits, breath caught in her chest, until Jamie replies, <em>in my pocket, yeah. </em></p><p>
  <em>Put one in real quick. Tell Owen it’s a voicemail. </em>
</p><p>This won’t exactly make Jamie’s afternoon more bearable, but it’s certainly going to enhance the fallout when all is said and done. </p><p>***</p><p>“One sec,” Jamie says, interrupting a story about Flora’s current little-kid crush on some boy at school. Owen seems to think the literal child is a “ruffian in the making”. “Got a voicemail I need to take.”</p><p>Owen gestures, still grinding his teeth over the memory of a fifteen-year-old who hadn’t quite possessed the proper manners the last time the Wingraves had visited A Batter Place. Jamie slides the earbuds from her pocket, places them into her ears, checks three times to make sure they’ve actually connected. </p><p>“Can you hear this?” she asks Owen over the opening chords of a song chosen at random. He shakes his head. </p><p>She clicks the video. </p><p>It isn’t long--maybe five seconds, a blink-and-you’ll miss it. Dani, standing in the bathroom, leaning back against the wall, her phone held aloft. Her hand, sliding between her legs. Her hips, rocking. Her eyes closed. </p><p>“<em>Jamie</em>.”</p><p>Jamie is in a bed six years ago, trying to make herself into a statue. Jamie isn’t breathing. </p><p>“You all right?” Owen sounds concerned. “It’s not bad news, is it? Nothing’s wrong?”</p><p>“Nope,” Jamie says hoarsely. She wants to watch this five-second clip until she combusts. She can’t possibly watch it again with Owen here, talking to her, looking <em>worried</em>. “Nope, just my, uh. Dentist. I’m due.”</p><p>She isn’t going to survive this night.</p><p>***</p><p>
  <em>oh my god. ohhh my god. oh my GOD, Dani. </em>
</p><p><em>Thought so</em>, Dani thinks, tucking her phone into the breast pocket of Jamie’s shirt. Let her chew on that for a little while. </p><p>***</p><p>Jamie has never been so grateful for manual labor in her life. Henry’s idea of decorations are, she suspects, actually <em>Flora’s</em> idea of decorations, scraped together from old movies. She finds herself hanging banners, streamers, balloons filled with the breath of teenagers who seem delighted to find themselves on the cusp of what promises to be--judging by the booze--a very adult party. </p><p>“I’ve counted those bottles,” she tells Miles as she sweeps through the kitchen, feeling very much as though she could straighten the entire manor in the span of an hour with this pent-up energy. “So no fuckin’ funny business.”</p><p>He makes an admirable stab at offended. “I don’t even <em>like</em>--” </p><p>“Uh huh, Mr. I Think I Should Be Allowed Wine At Ten.”</p><p>It’s like being home again, for better or worse, and no matter what Owen said, she finds herself sinking back into old habits. She checks the rosebushes for rot, pleased to find everything properly tended by her replacement. The grounds are clean, the lawns clipped, and she can find no fault in the shrubbery bordering the front door. </p><p>She doesn’t venture out into the woods, into the grove where an obstinate plant required a gentle hand in exchange for two months of nightly blooms. Some things, she thinks, are better left to memory. </p><p>And some are ingrained, no matter what you do. Everywhere she looks, ghosts reside. Young versions of Flora at the lake, humming to herself, and Miles in the gardens, asking about flowers. Nervous versions of Owen, stealing glances, and Hannah, pretending to keep her eyes on her work. </p><p>Dani, everywhere. Dani, giggling at the kitchen table, bent double as she tries to collect herself. Dani, dragging sharp breaths through her nose, fists clenched at her sides as she tries to push down panic. Dani, kissing her quickly before running off to take care of the kids. Dani, kissing her slowly, nowhere else to be for hours. </p><p>Dani, in their bathroom back in Vermont, eyelashes fluttering, lips forming Jamie’s name like a secret she can’t wait to share. </p><p><em>This is not working. </em>Jamie slips her phone from her pocket, glances around, opens the thread with that video. Even the still is too much, scorching to look at, like Jamie has any right. </p><p>She sometimes forgets that Dani has given her that much. That gift. Sometimes, even teetering ever closer to the first decade together, she forgets Dani <em>wants</em> her to look. Dani has wanted her full attention for years, and never seems to grow sick of it, never seems to grow full and fed and uninterested when it comes to this kind of hunger. </p><p><em>your silence is killing me</em>, she types. Deletes. Replaces with, <em>thinking of you. </em>It’s less needy. Less ravenous. Less obvious, how badly she is handling being this far away from Dani. </p><p>No less true, though.</p><p>“Hey.” One of Owen’s friends from dinner, the Scotsman, pokes his head into the kitchen. “Could use some help setting for dinner.”</p><p>“Yeah. Sure. Be right there.”</p><p>***</p><p><em>thinking of you</em>, Jamie says, and it’s all Dani can do not to call her. All she can do to remember this is only going to make matters all the sweeter. When the anticipation breaks. When they’re able to get a moment to themselves again.</p><p>It reminds her, in the strangest way, of working at the manor after her mother’s wedding, when the relationship had been new and hot and hungry. It had leveled out, eventually--as all things do--into comfortable silences and the ease of knowing each round of sex wouldn’t be the last, but there had been something about those first months. Something about the weight behind every kiss, the desperate slide of Jamie’s hands up her back, along her hips, into her hair. It had made her feel as though no one could ever want the way they did, as though no one could ever see her as completely as Jamie did. </p><p>And it had been, in a way, the anticipation that felt best. The knowledge that the work came first--that they each had jobs to do, neither willing to sacrifice their responsibilities on the altar of hormones. Jamie would turn up first thing in the morning, and they might steal a few minutes out in the greenhouse, or a kiss in the kitchen--and then they’d be off to separate corners of the grounds, doing what needed to be done. Each knowing the other was thinking of last night in Jamie’s flat, or up in Dani’s room, and forcing their focus back to the task at hand, anyway. </p><p><em>You lose a little of that</em>, she thinks, <em>when you move in together. When every touch becomes normal and beautiful and like home. It’s worth the loss, but it’s still...</em></p><p>Still nice to remember this. Nice, in a way she hadn’t expected, to feel it surge again now, as she watches her phone lay silent on the counter. Nice, to know the low ache in her belly is mirrored in that house, in Jamie gazing at text messages and photos, <em>thinking of you</em> the whole time.</p><p>A little longer, she promises them both. She’ll let this go on just a little longer. Jamie had said the party was starting at six. </p><p>Almost time.</p><p>***</p><p>Everyone from last night’s dinner is here, and then some. People she vaguely remembers from around town, from Owen’s mother’s funeral--cousins, she thinks, and school friends. He greets them all, jovial, and leans down to Jamie as they pile into the house. </p><p>“Henry went all-out. I didn’t tell him we needed this many.”</p><p>“Thought you were in charge of your own shenanigans,” she points out, grinning. He shakes his head. </p><p>“Apparently he takes best man duties a bit...more seriously than I’d anticipated.”</p><p>The house, though huge and sprawling and intended for significantly more than thirty people at a time, feels too busy. Packed too tightly. Jamie, who has never been particularly inclined toward parties to begin with, finds herself missing the inhale-exhale simplicity of six bodies tracing the halls on their own time. There had always been places to hide out, back then--maybe not for long, but enough to give a person breathing room. Now, with food spread over the entirety of the kitchen, bodies seem to spill recklessly across every bound the manor has to offer. There are strangers in the living room, the den, the fancy dining room Jamie had always felt filthy just peering into. There are people sitting on the stairs, holding plates in their laps, laughing while Owen holds court in the middle of the foyer. </p><p>It is, to put things mildly, not quite what Jamie had expected. </p><p>“You did this,” she points out to a rather pale Henry. He frowns.</p><p>“He said party.”</p><p>"Do you even <em>like</em> parties?”</p><p>“<em>He</em> said party,” Henry repeats faintly. “It was this or figure out how to rent out an entire penny arcade for thirty adults.”</p><p>Jamie laughs. “Was that Miles’ idea?”</p><p>“Flora. She also thought we could take in a show and round it all out with a midnight hike.”</p><p>“And you told her no?” Jamie would love a midnight hike. Midnight hikes are quiet. And there are plenty of trees to get lost in while she makes very important phone calls.</p><p>“Are you having fun?” Henry asks, his eyes wild. He looks like a man who long ago misplaced the concept of <em>fun</em>, and is struggling to work out its proper definition on the fly. </p><p>“Yes,” Jamie lies, feeling only moderately guilty, because it’s only <em>moderately</em> untrue. Which is to say, it wouldn’t be untrue, if all had gone to original plan and Dani had been on that plane with her. </p><p>This many attendees, not a one would notice if she and Dani slunk off somewhere. Not a single person would know or care, if they were to, for example, take up space in one of the bathrooms--or out near the lake--or...</p><p>Her phone, on cue, buzzes once. <em>How’s the party?</em></p><p><em>loud</em>, Jamie replies, and holds her breath. Dani, of course, isn’t obligated to keep a steady stream of texts. Dani might have taken a nap, or gone to see a movie, or done any number of things without her company. </p><p>A beat. Then: <em>Are you busy?</em></p><p><em>depends</em>, Jamie sends.</p><p>
  <em>On?</em>
</p><p><em>on if you’re gonna send another video like that and then go radio silent for hours. </em>Does she sound bitter? She tacks on a couple of emojis for good measure, feeling very much out of her element. What’s appropriate for a situation like this? The tongue emoji? The sweating one? A peach?</p><p>She's never quite figured out the modern-day hieroglyphics system, but it doesn’t seem to matter. Dani sends back a picture and a brief message.</p><p>The photo: Dani, in their room, Jamie’s shirt buttoned nearly to her collar. She is seated on the edge of the bed, one hand propped under her chin. She looks, to Jamie’s hungry eye, utterly normal. </p><p>The message: <em>Find somewhere quiet. Bring your headphones. </em></p><p>And then, a moment later: <em>Jamie? Make sure the door locks. </em></p><p>***</p><p>Dani waits for nearly five minutes, trying to convince herself this is what <em>calm</em> feels like. Calm, collected, completely in control of a situation that is likely to be wonderful. </p><p>Five minutes. Six minutes. Ten. </p><p>The butterflies in her stomach do not appear to have gotten the message about <em>calm</em>. </p><p>She realizes her thumb is in her mouth, an old habit pressing the nail between her teeth, and jerks away. Her phone, balanced on her thigh, vibrates. </p><p>
  <em>here. did it. hi. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>sorry, had to lose one of Owen’s friends. wanted me to do shots. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>don’t wanna do shots. want you. </em>
</p><p>Dani laughs, the nerves soothed by Jamie’s rambling one-two-three response. <em>You sure? I don’t want to keep you from anything. </em></p><p>A beat, then: <em>sure. so sure. fuckin miss you. </em></p><p>How, Dani wonders, can three words be so attractive and so touching at the same time? She closes her eyes, swaying a little in place, imagining Jamie tucked away in a corner of the huge old house. </p><p>
  <em>Where are you?</em>
</p><p><em>your room. </em>A picture, a moment later, as proof: Jamie, seated on the bed Dani remembers so well, pristine as the day she’d left it behind for good. </p><p><em>You know the latch is weird in there</em>, she says, remembering more than one occasion of that door popping back open with deeply inconvenient timing. </p><p>
  <em>triple-checked. locked. what did you have in mind?</em>
</p><p>Dani drags in a breath. There it is again, that nervy, twitchy uncertainty from last night. The feeling that Jamie is familiar, that touching Jamie is the only thing in the world she wants--and that <em>this</em>, the barrier of space and time between them, is relentless in its novelty. <em>This</em>, planning for Jamie all morning, waiting for Jamie to ask that very question, is new. <em>This</em>, holding the phone like a lifeline, thumb circling the green video button, is so new. </p><p>She’s holding her breath when it starts to ring. Holding her breath, as it goes on and on, her heart thrashing in panicked, uncertain lurches beneath Jamie’s soft shirt. </p><p>Holding her breath, as Jamie’s face fills the screen. </p><p>“God,” Jamie breathes. “Why didn’t we think of this before?”</p><p>***</p><p>Dani is grinning. Dani is grinning like she hasn’t been this happy in days, like the joy is too huge to contain, and Jamie could quite contentedly sit here for the rest of the night watching her grin. </p><p>“They won’t miss you?” Dani asks, her voice clear as day through the earbuds. Jamie shakes her head. </p><p>“Anything like last night, Owen’ll be flat on his back within the hour. That man cannot hold his drink.”</p><p>“Henry?” </p><p>“Probably looking for somewhere to hide himself. Never quite seen regret like that in real time.”</p><p>Dani laughs. “Sounds like I’m really missing out.”</p><p>“It’d be better,” Jamie says honestly, “if you were here. Think of all we could accomplish, sneaking off together like the old days...”</p><p>“Is that not what we’ve done now?” Dani makes a show of confusion, brow creased, leaning back on one hand. Jamie entertains a brief, wild impulse to touch the screen, to try her best to phase through it into their bedroom. </p><p>“Can’t believe we couldn’t go two days,” she says ruefully. “Couldn’t go <em>one</em> day, even.” </p><p>“It’s been longer than that,” Dani points out, and it’s not like she’s wrong. Between her cold, the preparations for the trip, Jamie working doubles down at the shop to make up for both, they haven’t really had time--proper, good, solid time--together in weeks. </p><p>“Time,” Jamie murmurs. “Gets away from you sometimes, doesn’t it?”</p><p>“I’d like to...get better about that.” Dani licks her lips. “Not to make things all...but, I mean, you never know, right? Don’t you always say nothing’s promised? I want to...I want to spend as much time with you as I can.”</p><p>Jamie leans back against pillows that no longer smell of Dani, no longer hold the shape of her head or the memory of Jamie joining her among them. “One day at a time, mm? Easier said than managed, when life gets...but I love you. I really do. And I...”</p><p>Dani raises her eyebrows. Jamie grins. </p><p>“Not to ruin the beauty of the moment and all, but uh. You’ve been sending some pictures. I mean. <em>Some</em> fucking pictures, Poppins.”</p><p>“Oh,” says Dani airily. “I was just trying to keep you occupied. I know how boring it gets, being all alone in another country...”</p><p>“I was <em>with</em> our friends,” Jamie points out. “Our friends who, by the way, think I’m a goddamned sex fiend, I think.”</p><p>“Are you not? Well. This is embarrassing.”</p><p>“Maybe if <em>someone</em> wasn’t sending texts about riding me into the carpet--”</p><p>“Oh, I’m sorry.” Dani, unbelievably, is smiling with pageant queen grace. “I didn’t realize you wanted me to stop talking about riding you. I’ll just file that away for my own personal--”</p><p>Jamie gives a laugh that is half a growl. “Know what the problem is with this whole, uh...set-up? The part where I’d be kissing you just now. And can’t. Because distance.”</p><p>“Didn’t seem to bother you last night,” Dani observes. She’s getting up, Jamie registers. Moving to the dresser. Setting the phone down. </p><p>“What’re you--”</p><p>“Easier with both hands,” Dani says. “Now. If it’s too much, not being able to...y’know. Do something about it. I can always stop. Wouldn’t want to <em>frustrate</em> you.”</p><p>Her fingers are working open the buttons, Jamie realizes, even as she’s stepping back nearly to the bed, offering Jamie a perfectly complete view. </p><p>“Right,” she says distractedly, struggling not to blink as each button comes free in slow motion. “Frustrated. Wouldn’t...want...that.”</p><p>***</p><p>It’s easier this way by far--even just for the simple comfort of Jamie’s eyes on her, Jamie drawing her lip between her teeth as she watches the shirt fall open bit by bit. Talking her way through sex over a phone is new; undressing for Jamie is decidedly not. </p><p>Even the silence feels good, Jamie too distracted to speak. The world seems to reduce down to the basics: cloth against her skin, the cool of the bedroom air, the faint breaths Jamie is drawing over the speaker. </p><p>The unreality of the distance, of Jamie against a backdrop of pillow and headboard from another life, seems to crash against the world as they know it now, and she thinks, <em>Tomorrow. She’ll be home tomorrow, but for now, I want her to keep looking at me like this forever. </em></p><p>“Glad,” Jamie says. She pauses, fingers toying over the final buttons. </p><p>“Hm?”</p><p>“Glad you’re feeling better,” Jamie says, her voice soft, almost hoarse. She seems to be putting considerable effort into staying quiet, as though concerned any vocalization might bring the party crashing into the room with her. </p><p>“You look like you might be coming down with something yourself. You’re all flushed.”</p><p>Jamie laughs, that surprised burst which comes most often in moments like these. There’s a thrill to it, to watching the concentration bloom into mirth, that never gets old. </p><p>“I love you,” she says again, affection and desire pushing the words across a tenuous wifi connection. Dani grins. </p><p>“You sure?”</p><p>“Very.”</p><p>“Good. Remember that.” She lets the shirt slide to the floor, pleased when Jamie leans forward. </p><p>“I. When did you get <em>that</em>?”</p><p>***</p><p><em>That</em> is white lace, and very little coverage, and Jamie has never in her life seen it before. She’s not sure, legally, Dani should be required to wear anything else again.</p><p>“When,” she repeats breathlessly, “did you have time to buy a <em>corset</em> without my noticing?”</p><p>“The internet is a wonderful tool, Jamie.”</p><p>“And wise enough to pick one with a functional zip, too.” Jamie grins. “I see you’ve learned your lesson regarding clothing one can and can’t manage without aid.”</p><p>“Seemed practical,” Dani says calmly. Her fingers brush the zipper in question, set along her ribs, as though she hasn’t quite decided if it’s worth the effort.</p><p>“Yes,” Jamie agrees, dry-mouthed and, once again, <em>hating</em> England for all she’s worth, “that’s the...point. Practicality.”</p><p>“Now, here’s the thing...” Dani is trailing languid fingers along her shoulder, down her arm, her expression considerably more relaxed than anything Jamie is feeling in this moment. “You’re in a house full of people.”</p><p>“Unfortunately accurate.”</p><p>“Which means if you’re not careful, someone might notice what you’re up to.”</p><p><em>And?</em> thinks Jamie, who has never cared less what someone might think of her than in this very moment. Still, Dani has her <em>I’m talking</em> face on, the one she uses when it’s very important that Jamie drop everything and pay full attention. “You have thoughts on the matter, I take it?”</p><p>Dani grins. “Only that you should be very, very quiet.”</p><p>“And you?” Jamie’s entire body is performing a truly innovative trick, all heat and gooseflesh in equal measure. She is hyperaware of the bed beneath her, of what history this bed holds, of Dani far too great a distance away in white lace and stockings and fucking garters. </p><p>“Me?” Her hands are trailing seemingly without purpose, one tracing her clavicle, the other sliding across her stomach. The grin doesn’t fade in the least. “No one can hear what <em>I</em> do.”</p><p>“An incredibly fair point,” Jamie hears herself say from a thousand miles outside her suddenly-vibrating body. “All the more reason to, ah. Enjoy yourself.”</p><p>“As much as I can, anyway. With you all the way over there.” A person should not be able to move as slowly as Dani is just now, every stroke of fingertip over her own skin as patient as Jamie's heart is reckless. It is, somehow, making the whole idea of watching Dani from this far away all the more potent. To think Dani is breathing so calmly, tracing the curve of skin as it vanishes into white lace, while Jamie vaguely considers passing out.</p><p>“Think you’ll manage, somehow.” She might well implode this evening, Jamie thinks, but what a fucking way to go. “You, ah...planning on just standing there all day?”</p><p>Dani opens her mouth, plainly ready to volley back--and disappears from view, Jamie’s background photo emerging without warning from the dropped call. Jamie sits bolt upright, staring at the traitorous pocket computer in her hand. </p><p>“<em>Fuck.</em>”</p><p>***</p><p>It is, Dani thinks with something between amusement and anxiety, a better time than it <em>could</em> have been, to remember the manor’s historically-miserable wifi. </p><p><em>this fucking house</em>, Jamie texts not a minute later. <em>swear to god. </em></p><p>Dani laughs, leaning against the dresser. <em>I can wait. </em></p><p><em>no, no. no waiting. just. gotta find a better spot. </em>Jamie sounds near-frantic. <em>hang on. </em></p><p><em>No rush. </em>She adds a photo for good measure, half to inspire Jamie, half to keep her own confidence running high. It had been a stab in the dark, relatively speaking, picking this out. They’ve never needed much by way of costume; Jamie seems to think she’s unbearably attractive in just a long t-shirt, one of Jamie’s own shirts, a towel. But every once in a while, she thinks, it’s good to shake things up. </p><p>She’d thought, initially, it’d be best saved for a birthday--an anniversary--maybe a day when both of them just needed to feel especially brave. She hadn’t expected that day to come simply because Jamie found her way overseas alone, but the expression on Jamie’s face had told her all she needed to know. </p><p><em>where</em>, Jamie texts now, <em>where the fuck is the signal best. do you remember?</em></p><p><em>Outside</em>, Dani answers. </p><p>
  <em>five minutes. </em>
</p><p>***</p><p>“Hey!” Owen, impressively reeking of liquor, grasps at her arm. “Where are you off to?”</p><p>“Just, ah, air. Need air.” She needs a phone signal, a private corner of the grounds, and Dani back. He needs to know exactly none of that. “You all right?”</p><p>“Best,” he says fondly. “Banger of a time. Don’t tell Henry, but <em>his</em> kind of party? Truly excellent.”</p><p>She suspects Henry is off hiding in his old study, doing his best to forget the whole thing. “I will keep it under lock and key. You good on your own?”</p><p>“Not on my own,” he says jovially. “Having the <em>best</em> time--Hannah! I should call Hannah!”</p><p>Well, Jamie thinks distractedly, she did agree to marry the man. A drunken phone call from this evening is bound to be somewhere in Hannah’s playbook. </p><p>Her own phone goes off--enough signal to push through messages, at least--and she steals a glance. <em>No rush. </em>Dani, tongue barely visible against her lower lip, grinning like this seduction is going exactly as planned. </p><p><em>Light-headed in here, anyone, or just me? </em>she thinks, all but sprinting away from Owen and his own attempts at navigating a cell phone. Perk of being the odd one out, she thinks: no one else tries to impede her progress. She thinks she hears one of the chefs call her name from the drinking game in the dining room and blazes by without pause. Can always ask for forgiveness later, she reasons. Much, much later.</p><p>She’s passing the kitchen at breakneck speed when she catches sight of movement and doubles back. <em>Heaven fucking help me. </em>“Miles! Better not be a bottle under your jacket.”</p><p>He gives her a guilty smile. “It’s...a...”</p><p>“Gonna have to think faster than that,” she warns, jabbing a finger in his direction. The phone in her hand goes off again: Dani appears to have moved to the bed. She groans. “Gimme that. Go on.”</p><p>Scowling, he withdraws a bottle of truly unremarkable booze and slaps it into her outstretched hand. “Unbelievable.”</p><p>“You’re telling me,” she agrees, not entirely sure when she grew into the responsible one around here. “Go on, off with you. Go enjoy the party like a proper underage mongrel.”</p><p>She thinks he mutters something like, <em>Was trying to</em>, shuffling off with hands in his pockets. She watches him go, astounded by his height, irritated with those shadow glimpses of a man she hasn’t had the misfortune to see in nearly a decade in his movements, and with herself for being surprised. Miles is a good kid, she believes, and Henry’s doing his best, but a teenager is a teenager.</p><p>
  <em>Least he’s not in fucking prison. </em>
</p><p>Her phone, a third time, insistent: Dani’s hand teasing down the zipper an inch. She groans, making a beeline for the door<em>. </em></p><p>***</p><p>
  <em>thought there was no rush. </em>
</p><p><em>Just keeping warmed up. </em>In truth, it’s the only way she can keep herself from sliding back into nerves, sending Jamie progressively more coaxing messages. If she stops, she’s going to remember what’s really going on: that it is a sunny afternoon in August, and she is dressed for a burlesque no one else can see, and Jamie is at Bly Manor, of all places. </p><p>If she gets embarrassed, this will all stop. And that would be fine, perfectly fine; Jamie would call back, and they’d laugh and tease and make fun of Owen’s poor head for liquor, and it’d all be a nice evening. </p><p>She doesn’t want a nice evening. She wants Jamie’s eyes on her again, Jamie’s whole face going a little bit slack as she drinks in this new image, this new form of courage Dani’s put on for her alone. </p><p><em>almost there</em>, Jamie adds, urged on by some strange psychic energy, by her own arousal, by Dani’s hand tracing down her body in the next picture. <em>this goddamn house is too bloody big. </em></p><p>***</p><p>The greenhouse is, blissfully, not locked. She’d been relying on that fact with a hope that could power an entire city--it had been a rare occurrence, locking up after the plants back in the day, and she's relieved to find her replacement keeps similar habits.</p><p>She’s barely through the door when she punches the call button, waits with breath pounding in and out in violent sweeps as it rings--rings--</p><p>“Five minutes, huh?” Dani says. “Longest five minutes in history, maybe.”</p><p>“Got--stopped--Miles--kitchen--” She doesn’t generally think of herself as out of shape, but a wound-up sprint across the grounds is no longer in her daily activity schedule. She collapses onto the sofa, panting. “Shit. One sec.”</p><p>Dani’s expression softens, her head propped on her hand, hair tumbling around her shoulders. “Catch your breath. This is going to be a lot less fun if you actually black out.”</p><p>“No, I’m--totally fine. All good. Just, uh.” Black spots dancing around her vision are maybe not the best sign. “Where were we?”</p><p>Dani laughs. “Really feeling something over there, huh?”</p><p>“You,” Jamie points out, “are wearing <em>that</em>, and I can’t touch you. If I were feeling any less, it’d be safe to assume me dead.”</p><p>“You like it, then?” There’s mischief in Dani’s smile, but nerves, too. The same ducked-head shy look she gets whenever Jamie’s on the other side of a camera around the house, whenever Jamie stops and just gazes down at her in bed. </p><p>“Yes,” Jamie says honestly. “Really, really do. And I’d like it just the same if it were a t-shirt and sweats.” </p><p>“Be a bit more comfortable,” Dani says with a laugh. Jamie watches her settle the phone on something--a stack of Jamie’s books, she suspects--and lean back. “How’s the view?”</p><p>“Perfect.” Jamie gestures around herself. “No one to overhear, either.”</p><p>“Shame,” Dani teases. “I sort of liked the idea of watching you try to stay quiet.”</p><p>A low groan pulls from her against Jamie’s will, her body thrumming. “Can still try. No promises. You are...”</p><p>“Lonely?” Dani suggests. Her hand is sliding low, stroking up her own thigh. Jamie’s breath catches, watching her drag her nails into soft skin with a hiss. “Turned on?”</p><p>“Doing significant psychological damage,” Jamie agrees. “Not that I’m complaining.”</p><p>“No?” She’s tracing the edge of one garter, fingers playing along the buckle holding up a fragile-looking stocking. Jamie has the sudden terrible urge to use her teeth to remove both, fist clenching between her knees. “Could probably make you complain about something, if I really tried.”</p><p>Jamie reclines against the arm of the sofa, struggling to retain some measure of composure. “Do your worst.”</p><p>“Alone?” </p><p>“M’right here.” Right here in clothes that suddenly feel too tight, in a world too big. She licks her lips, closes her eyes for a moment to steady herself. </p><p>The sound of a zipper jerks them open again. Dani arches her back, runs her hands up her body, the corset peeling away from skin with little fanfare. </p><p>“Easier to breathe,” she points out, almost apologetic. Jamie bites her own tongue. </p><p>“Sure. Yeah. Breathing.”</p><p>“You’ll want to keep doing that,” Dani reminds her. </p><p>“I mean. Easier said than done, don’t you think?”</p><p>***</p><p>Jamie is watching her with a look she hasn’t seen in too long. It reminds her, almost, of being at a wedding--hair ruined, makeup questionable, the memory of Jamie pinning her against a bathroom sink vibrating along her skin. Jamie had looked at her this way, as though itching to close the distance and make a scene, regardless of her better judgement. </p><p>“I’ve missed that,” she says. Jamie tips her head. </p><p>“What’s that?”</p><p>“You. Looking at me like you’re...almost afraid of how much you want this. You’re always so careful, even with me. Always taking care of us both. It’s good to see you just a little bit reckless.” </p><p>Jamie smiles. “Reckless is a word. Windows all over, and all I can think is how much I need--”</p><p>“Get a blanket,” Dani says, even as she’s closing her eyes, letting her hands wander up her naked skin, letting herself believe it’s Jamie’s touch warming her. “Put it over your lap.”</p><p>“You won’t get much of a view.” The camera bounces, Jamie shifting to do as she’s told. Dani shakes her head.</p><p>“The view is for you. I just want to watch your face.”</p><p>The sharp inhalation is all she needs to know Jamie is already halfway along, ready to meet her with a word. Jamie, who has likely been shifting uncomfortably all day, struggling to stay focused on the world of friends and parties and good behavior. </p><p>“You’ve had a hard day, huh?” she asks, grinning. “I’ve been--”</p><p>“Mean,” Jamie says. “Very.”</p><p>“I can fix that.” Her skin is warm, her heart pounding. She leans her head back, gives Jamie the best possible view as she slides a hand down her stomach, across white lace so thin, it might as well be sheer. “Still think you can be quiet?”</p><p>***</p><p>Jamie doubts it. Her teeth have sunk deep into her lip, her breath coming in shallow jerks as she watches Dani’s hand trace between her legs. Her eyes are closed, her back arched as she runs two fingers over lace, her legs falling open with a soft sigh. </p><p>“You can join in anytime,” she adds, and Jamie hastens to jerk at her own belt, tearing the zipper of her jeans down with a clumsy right hand. The blanket, she is aware, is a pointless endeavor--if anyone walks in on this, there will be no hiding. </p><p><em>Just a little bit reckless</em>, she thinks, watching as Dani cups one breast, the muscles of her stomach clenching. <em>Just a little bit--</em></p><p>Dani makes a soft, appreciative sound, her eyes opening in time to watch Jamie’s lips part around a silent sigh. “How are you...”</p><p>“Hanging on,” Jamie breathes. “Long as you do.” It’s a challenge she isn’t certain she can match, not with how slowly Dani is stroking herself, with how gently her hips are rising into her hand. Jamie’s own body is screaming; she brushes thin cotton and feels herself clench. </p><p>“That,” Dani says with a lazy grin, “is very unlikely.” Her hand is barely moving, rubbing light circles; Jamie exhales shakily. </p><p>“How are you so--you’re not--”</p><p>“I told you. It has to be you.” She bites her lip, gives a soft moan, pressing harder. “If it’s just me, it’s just skin. If it’s you...”</p><p>“I’m right here,” Jamie repeats, clutching the phone tighter. Her jeans are tight around her hand, her fingers already wet. “You can--you should--”</p><p>Dani allows herself a low cry, rocking gently against her own fingers. “I miss you,” she sighs. “I miss your mouth...”</p><p>Jamie huffs out a helpless sound, pushing harder than she means to. Her hips jump, her knuckles rubbing ruthlessly against denim. </p><p>“I miss that,” Dani adds. “That noise you make, when you’re trying to be quiet in hotels, or in the back room at work. That’s my favorite. Do it again.”</p><p>Jamie does, watches the rhythm of Dani’s fingers pick up, her own blood electric with the sight of Dani’s hand sliding up her neck, cradling the back of her head exactly the way Jamie does in a particularly fevered kiss. </p><p>“Again,” she says, her voice almost a whine, the hand between her legs working faster. Jamie complies; it isn’t difficult, not with her own hand rubbing hard, sharp friction through her shorts. </p><p>She can imagine Dani here so easily--remembers Dani on this sofa years ago, pressing impatiently into her with kisses stolen on a lunch break, or while the sunset sank into the world around them. It’s so easy, putting Dani between her legs, Dani’s hand down her jeans, Dani making those breathy, excited noises into her neck. </p><p>She swears softly, hears herself murmur, “More.”</p><p>Dani laughs, that low vibrating sound that is as much sex as it is mirth. She shifts, picks up the phone, adjusts so Jamie can better watch her hand as it works against lace and slick skin. Jamie makes a noise too embarrassing to take back, suddenly aware of just how much she can make out through the fabric. </p><p>“Wear that more,” she says hoarsely. “While I’m actually there to take it off you. Please.”</p><p>“Since you said please,” Dani groans, slipping a hand along the joint of her thigh, beneath the lace, pushing it aside enough to reveal just about everything. Jamie’s hand stills, her body rewiring, refocusing to Dani’s hand on the screen as she presses herself with two fingers, sliding her hand in small motions up and down. Jamie hears her groan again. “Didn’t--didn’t stop, did you--”</p><p>***</p><p>“No,” Jamie says, and her brow tightens. Dani imagines her hand, imagines replacing it with her own, the evidence of an entire day spent wanting Dani slick along her fingers. </p><p>“Faster?”</p><p>“Can’t--” Jamie swallows. “Can’t take much faster and still--”</p><p>“Sure,” Dani urges, watching for signs in Jamie’s expression that she is, indeed, that close. “Sure, you can.”</p><p>It’s the way Jamie bites down on a curse that really makes this feel real. The way Jamie is trying to breathe more slowly, even as Dani is shoving lace aside and slipping seeking fingers into heat. The way Jamie is watching her grind against her own hand, her voice winding higher as mindless words begin spilling past her lips in time with each thrust. </p><p>Jamie likes this part, she knows. Likes the part where the pretense unravels and she begins to lose real control--begins murmuring against Jamie’s shoulder, against the pillow, trying and failing to muffle the phrases. </p><p>“Jamie--can you--can you give me more? Can you--want to watch you--<em>Jamie</em>.”</p><p>Jamie shifts, and though it’s Jamie’s face she’s craving, Jamie’s lips parting around a low groan, there’s something to be said for the camera switching angles. Something to be said for the outline of Jamie’s hand in her jeans, the blanket tossed down around her ankles, her hips jerking in rough tandem with her own strokes. </p><p>She can hear herself swearing, the syllables round and hot on her tongue as she strains toward her hand. It’s easy, watching Jamie push herself higher, wind herself tighter, to imagine their positions reversed. So easy, with Jamie whispering, “Dani, fuck, not much--not much more to--<em>fuck</em>, I’m--”</p><p>***</p><p>She loses control completely, the day’s teasing taking her a step too far over the edge; before she can reel back, she’s falling. She clenches her teeth around Dani’s name, shifts the camera back to her face, hears Dani make a thin, reedy sound of pleasure. </p><p>“Told you,” she gasps. “Told you I couldn’t--”</p><p>Not that it matters. Dani is still moving, her fingers pushing deep, her jaw tensing as she loses herself in the motion. Jamie, hand still buried in her jeans, sits up, desperate to miss none of it. </p><p>“Almost?” </p><p>Dani nods once, sharply. Jamie can imagine her heels digging into the bedspread, her body chasing that high held just out of reach. She sighs, drops the phone back on its makeshift stand, slides her free hand up to her lips as if to muffle her rising cries.</p><p>“Don’t,” Jamie says softly, “don’t even. Come on, after all this? I want to hear it all.”</p><p>That seems to be the thing, more than what Dani’s doing to herself, to do it. Jamie, voice ragged, saying, “Come on, I love you, I miss you, <em>come--</em>” pushing Dani over into a cry that sinks into Jamie’s bones. </p><p>She watches the slow descent, Dani’s face gradually relaxing, her body draped across the mattress with a decadent lack of care. It is, for her, Jamie realizes, only mid-afternoon. The sun streaming through their window paints her in shades of gold, and she thinks, <em>How many hours could I burn, just watching her like this? </em></p><p>Time is sneaky, even cruel--but it can be kind, too. It gives her this: long, winding minutes of Dani’s heaving breaths mellowing slowly, Dani’s eyes finding hers through a long-distance call. Her lips quirk, her voice a little thinner than usual when she says, “Better than the party?”</p><p>“In every conceivable way,” Jamie confirms, doing up her jeans with clumsy hands. Dani rolls onto her side, half-naked and entirely glorious. </p><p>“Should probably get back to it, huh?”</p><p>“Should I?”</p><p>“You flew out there <em>for</em> the party,” Dani points out. “If you’re not going to play with the other kids, you could have just stayed home.”</p><p>“And hasn’t tonight proven I absolutely should have?” Jamie wonders with a grin. Dani’s probably right, unfortunately--Owen, drunk as he is, is probably asking the wallpaper where she’s gone. She sighs. “I should...”</p><p>“Go,” Dani confirms, pulling the sheet up over herself with a shiver. “Have fun. Tell Owen--”</p><p>“I am telling Owen I had a powerful urge to check up on the plants, and nothing more,” Jamie interrupts with a laugh. “Man has zero filter when he’s drunk, the last thing I need is questions.”</p><p>Dani laughs. Reaches toward the screen, as though she can run her fingers along Jamie’s brow. “I love you. Think I’m gonna take a nap.”</p><p>“Sweet dreams,” Jamie says with a twitch of her eyebrows, and waits for Dani to hang up mid-giggle before striding back into the house. </p><p>Owen, unsurprisingly, is still very drunk. Surprisingly, he is also very <em>tall</em>, propped on the shoulders of a man who, Jamie hopes, has been consuming significantly less alcohol. </p><p>“Look!” Owen jabs both hands toward her, index fingers outstretched. “M’friend! M’friend Jamie!”</p><p>“What,” Jamie asks a somewhat shell-shocked Miles, lurking against the staircase, “is he doing?”</p><p>“He is...” Miles grimaces. “Dusting the ceiling for Hannah.”</p><p>“He <em>does </em>realize he’ll bust open his head long before reaching said ceiling.”</p><p>Miles shrugs. “Adults are weird.”</p><p>***</p><p>There are naps, and then there are full-body retaliations from multiple orgasms on the heels of an illness. Dani finds herself embraced wholeheartedly by the latter, waking groggily several hours later to find the clock has marched straight on into evening without her. </p><p>Her phone is riddled with texts, some accompanied by photos, all from Jamie.</p><p><em>came back to this, i’ll have you know. </em>A photo of Owen, looking very much as though he is playing chicken in the foyer on the shoulders of a giant. Beyond him, Flora leans against the staircase railing, her eyes wide. </p><p>
  <em>update: the idiot did not break open his idiot skull. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>further update: he is now calling us all his chef friends. also, butter buddies. also, his puns are less punny when he’s drunk. mostly just absurd.</em>
</p><p>Another photo, an hour later: Flora, still on the stairs, her head nodding against Miles’ shoulder. Both look very young in sleep, though Dani feels ancient just looking upon their teenage faces. </p><p>
  <em>remind you of the old days? sleepovers that always seemed to end with me cartin ‘em off to bed like sacks of flour. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>hope you’re sleepin well. wish i was sleepin well. Owen has started a game of strip poker that somehow, SOMEHOW, Henry is winning.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>update: Henry still winning. i am down earrings, jacket, both socks, and a necklace. hope they don’t make me take off my trousers, or this is bound to get awkward.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>update: Henry has the entire pot. Owen is in his literal pants. have seen more of Owen tonight than any god or man intended. Hannah should be so proud.</em>
</p><p>A photo: Owen grinning, bare-chested, his glasses missing. Jamie, in a tank top and amused expression, pretending to be upset about his arm around her shoulder. </p><p>
  <em>update the last: Henry did not lose a stitch. Hannah now has seven pictures of her near-naked fiancé waiting in her phone, and several of a Greek woman who says she ought to leave Owen for her instead. can confirm, Owen would lose in a fair fight. lucky Hannah’s fond.</em>
</p><p>A photo: Jamie back in the hotel, propped against a wall of pillows. She looks exhausted, but happy, her hair a tangled mess.</p><p>
  <em>off to bed at last. flight’s early--should get in around ten? will text when we take off and land. love you, Poppins. save some of that energy for tomorrow, yeah?</em>
</p><p>Dani punches back a response--<em>I love you, too. Many, many questions, which I will save for a verbal conversation another time. Safe flight. I can’t wait to see you.</em>--and sets off to amuse herself for the evening. Her body, though not entirely forgiving either of her earlier escapades, nor the desire still running warm beneath her skin, is at least calmer now. Hungry, mostly.</p><p>A shower first, she decides, fetching a fresh shirt from Jamie’s side of the closet and a pair of sweatpants they never quite seem able to stop arguing over. A shower, and maybe Thai ordered in. </p><p>She offers one last picture to Jamie--rumpled, slightly more awake, but otherwise exactly as Jamie last saw her--and settles in for a final night alone.</p><p>***</p><p>The flight back feels, as all flights home do, much longer than the one to London. Jamie does her best to doze, fails miserably, settles for thumbing back through the various images from Dani over the course of the weekend. It is, perhaps, a little less productive than catching up on her reading--though infinitely more interesting. </p><p>Vermont is warm, overcast, the world itching for a storm. She makes her way through the bustling airport, thumb punching up a quick <em>landed safe, see you soon</em> text. This is the part of any travel that feels the most draining, she thinks--wishing for a teleportation machine to send her straight home to bed, to Dani, without having to go through all the steps of human contact along the way. Even the fact of calling a ride feels like too much effort, as she trudges outside with her bag tossed over her shoulder. </p><p>“I wouldn’t waste the fare,” a voice says cheerfully, pulling her attention from her phone. Dani, leaning against a familiar Jeep parked at the arrivals curb. </p><p>“You,” Jamie says, stopping inches from her with an enormous grin, “aren’t supposed to be picking me up.”</p><p>“Thought you could use a reminder of what I look like with clothes <em>on</em>,” Dani says, sliding a hand around her neck and pulling her into a too-brief kiss. </p><p>“With <em>my</em> clothes on, you mean.” Jamie plucks at her shirt. “You burn all of yours in an accident?”</p><p>Dani shrugs. “I was sick.”</p><p>“Look in perfect health to my eyes--”</p><p>“I was...sad?” She lifts the other arm to join the first around Jamie’s neck, leaning back, swaying. “I was...cold?”</p><p>“All terrible, terrible hardships,” Jamie murmurs, kissing her again, “which should not be allowed--”</p><p>A horn blares, a weary soccer mom gesturing for them to, please, get the fuck out of that parking spot. The please, Jamie thinks, is more implied than anything.</p><p>“Remind you a bit of your mother?” she asks, smiling too brightly at the scowling stranger. Dani digs her nails into the back of her neck in gentle admonition.</p><p>“If you pick a fight with a strange woman, we aren’t making it back to our bed for, like...longer than I’d planned.”</p><p>“Which was?”</p><p>“About as long as it takes us to go ten over on the freeway,” Dani muses. “And by us, I mean you, I still don’t understand what you get out of operating heavy machinery.”</p><p>Jamie offers the woman a genial wave to go with her toothy grin, removing the keys from Dani’s back pocket with a practiced hand. “Duly noted. Now, when you say bed--”</p><p>“I mostly mean you won’t be seeing outside the apartment for the rest of the day,” Dani says cheerfully, sliding into the passenger seat. “You’re welcome to get me naked in whatever room you see fit.”</p><p>Jamie laughs. “So good to be home.”</p><p>***</p><p>This, Dani thinks, is much more her sort of wedding. A beautiful outdoor venue, complete with gazebo, paper lanterns, a string quartet performing old Beatles songs off near the open bar--the whole picture is as glorious as the blue sky, the sweet warmth of the French air, the tears in Owen’s eyes. </p><p>“Why didn’t dear Karen do it up like this?” Jamie wonders from the folding chair beside her, looking wonderingly at the flower-threaded archway through which Hannah will walk any minute. “Bloody gorgeous. And, y’know, <em>alive</em>. Shouldn’t a wedding feel alive?”</p><p>“Felt pretty alive at that one,” Dani points out, grinning. Jamie’s hand flexes once against her thigh, careful not to push her reasonably-short dress any higher. </p><p>“Don’t remind me.”</p><p>“Why not?” Dani says innocently. “I think they’re pretty good memories, mostly...”</p><p>“I already missed half the stag party,” Jamie replies against her ear, voice low enough to make Dani shiver. “We miss the actual ceremony due to me going down on you in the bathroom, we’ll never hear the end of it.”</p><p>Dani squeezes her hand. “All right, spoilsport. We’ll make up for it later.”</p><p>She feels good--better than good--sitting in the sunshine as the opening swells of <em>All My Loving</em> play along the breeze. Owen, standing with hands clasped behind his back, has never looked happier; Henry, one hand on his shoulder like a proud father, looks perfectly at home. Flora and Miles are taller than she remembers, both of them stealing glances into the audience and waving when they catch her eye. </p><p>And Hannah--Hannah is truly royal, in a long gown of deep plum, her huge, rich earrings catching the light. “Never was one for tradition,” she’d said when Dani had asked about these choices the night before. “Tried it once, didn’t turn out so well. We thought we’d do this our way.”</p><p><em>As you should</em>, Dani thinks now, watching her glide down the aisle with eyes only for her husband and his bowtie to match her dress. Anything that makes Hannah beam this way, laughing out loud when Owen bows his head over her hand, kisses her knuckles like a knight of the round table, is perfect. Anything that puts that spring into Owen’s step, his back expertly straight, the silver in his hair a foil to the gold of Hannah’s rings, is perfect. </p><p>There is a priest, and a scroll of words from an ancient book, and Dani finds she isn’t listening to any of it. Her hand squeezes Jamie’s, the lines of her palm fitting neatly against the work-roughened skin she’s learned so well over the years, and she remembers Hannah at dinner last night. </p><p>
  <em>“You’re sure. It doesn’t have to be here--”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“If you don’t do it soon, dear, I’m going to have to do it for you.” </em>
</p><p>Hannah had laughed at her wide eyes, patted her on the wrist, and Dani had only been able to grin. She’s grinning again now, as Hannah and Owen look at one another with the certainty that no one else is quite as real, quite as solid, quite as true in this moment as they are. </p><p>There are vows--declarations of eternal loyalty, eternal compassion, eternal love. There are rings, Owen’s hand shaking violently as he slides Hannah’s over her knuckle. There is a kiss, and another, and Jamie leans over to press one to the side of Dani’s head as Hannah splays painted fingers along Owen’s cheeks and beams into his skin. </p><p>“Husband and wife,” Jamie repeats, as they applaud the happy couple back up the aisle and through the archway hand in hand. “Christ, makes you feel...”</p><p>“Old?” Dani teases, one hand straying toward her purse. She keeps hefting it carefully, checking the weight, nervous. Jamie, eyes on Mr. and Mrs. Sharma, doesn’t notice. </p><p>“Lucky,” she says with such affection, Dani can’t help kissing her. “How’d we all get so goddamned lucky?”</p><p>“Mostly,” Dani says, “I blame Hannah’s good sense.”</p><p>***</p><p>They do not, despite Jamie’s not-so-mild desire to the contrary, actually slip off to the bathrooms. There are cocktails and toasts, a dinner better than anything she’d eaten in the first twenty-five years of her life. There are first dances and second dances, Miles looking embarrassed as he is paired off with one of Hannah’s pretty young nieces to twirl about. Flora, paired with a boyfriend she <em>insists </em>is the love of her life, is beaming.</p><p>“This is going to be me someday, you know,” she tells Jamie, waiting in line for a fresh drink at the bar. “Only my dress will be pink. Or maybe white. Tradition is lovely, isn’t it?”</p><p>“Sometimes,” Jamie agrees, eyes flicking toward the head table. Dani is crouched beside Hannah’s chair, speaking in low tones through a grin. </p><p>“Are <em>you</em> going to wear a dress?” Flora asks. Jamie raises an eyebrow. </p><p>“When’s that?”</p><p>“When you get married.”</p><p>Jamie laughs. Flora doesn’t.</p><p>“You <em>can</em> get married, you know. It’s legal now and everything. Took them long enough,” she adds in a venomous whisper. </p><p>“Truthfully, I don’t know. Haven’t really thought much about it.”</p><p>“But you <em>have</em> to think about it,” Flora says, stepping up to the bar and ordering a soda without any regard for the alcohol. Jamie’s chest aches with the innocence Flora has managed to retain all these years, threaded below her child’s certainty like a well-paved road. “People in love <em>always</em> think about it. It’s in all the stories.”</p><p>“Maybe. But when you grow up--well. When you’re--”</p><p>“Gay,” Flora says patiently, like she’s the first to inform Jamie there’s a word for it. Jamie swallows another laugh. </p><p>“Right. You don’t always let yourself go there.”</p><p>“Why not?”</p><p>“Hurts too much,” Jamie says honestly. “To think it might never be allowed.”</p><p>“But it <em>is</em> allowed,” Flora says, looking genuinely perplexed that Jamie has not worked this out for herself. “It’s allowed in America, too, I checked.”</p><p>“I,” Jamie begins, not entirely sure this is the time or place for such a deep conversation, relieved to feel the pressure of Dani’s hand at her back. </p><p>“Can I borrow you?”</p><p>“For the rest of my bloody life,” she murmurs, offering Flora a wave and hoping she doesn’t look too grateful for the escape. “Where are we off to, then? Bathrooms after all?”</p><p>“Maybe later.” Dani has her hand in a firm grasp, is leading her around tables and small clusters of people as though pulled with a pure magnetism toward the reception hall doors. </p><p>“Dani--”</p><p>“Little further,” Dani says, that determined cast to her voice she gets when she’s looking for Jamie’s complete attention, for Jamie to quiet her mind and listen with every inch of her person to what Dani has to say. She’s given Jamie some of the most valuable insights to their relationship in this very voice: told Jamie all about her dad, her relationship with Eddie, her fears for the future. Told Jamie, too, how much she loved her--how <em>in</em> love she was, and how that scared her, sometimes, but not half as much as she’d thought it should.</p><p>“Okay,” she says at last, stopping among tall, shaded trees. “Okay. So. Here’s the thing.”</p><p>***</p><p>Jamie looks, unsurprisingly, puzzled. “You wanted to show me French trees? Not that it’s outside my area of interest, but, uh--”</p><p>“Not--not that.” Her hands are sweating. She probably should have expected this much, probably should have planned this differently. Maybe she could have waited until they were at home after all, given Jamie a project, hidden the matter like a prize for Jamie to uncover. </p><p>Maybe--but here, now, it feels right. Hannah had said it best, raising a forkful of incredible cake to richly-painted lips: “Time is short, and time is valuable. Do it when you’re ready.”</p><p>“Here’s the thing,” she says again, taking one of Jamie’s hands, gazing at the full scope of her. Standing half in shadow, half in moonlight, in charcoal slacks and a shirt stained with large maroon blossoms, she is more than Dani could possibly have hoped, dreaming of her perfect person as a child. Dreaming, even, of Jamie six years ago. Never once quite daring to dream of this moment as a possibility. </p><p>“You’re...my best friend,” she begins, “and the love of my life, and--”</p><p>And it all spills out: how there’s never enough time, not for any of them to have everything they want, but how Jamie makes that seem irrelevant. How Jamie, just living her life beside Dani’s, just scrambling eggs, and taking the car for an oil change, and holding up a miserable attempt at knitting for Dani to giggle over, makes the time seem less like it’s slipping away, more like it’s stacking skyward. Jamie, with every kiss, with every grin, with every reminder that life is fragile, and unfair, and so unbearably kind, is the best reason she’s ever found to keep pushing forward through all the weird, the bad, the hideous. </p><p>“I don’t know,” she says, feeling the words building up on her tongue, weighted down with emotion. “I don’t know how much time we have. No one ever does. But I...I want to spend it with you. However much we get, if it’s ten years or ten thousand, I just--if it’s what you want, too. If it’s enough.”</p><p>Jamie’s mouth works, her eyes wide. “I--are you asking--”</p><p>There’s a ring, held so tight in her fist, it leaves marks on her palm. She holds it out now, this thin gold band, and says, “I am. If you--if you want--”</p><p>Jamie kisses her, nodding, laughing--crying, too, Dani thinks. She’s shaking all over, pressing into Dani’s arms, and though there is music in the distance, the cheers and chatter of another celebration, for this moment, there is nothing but the quiet. Nothing but Jamie’s smile, Jamie’s hands on the back of her head as she kisses her with little room for words. </p><p>“I meant for there to be flowers,” Dani says, when Jamie at last pulls back and tips her head back, sniffling. “I had a whole--idea, with flowers, and--but then we got here, and I thought...well...it all started with a wedding, didn’t it?”</p><p>“Weird question,” Jamie says, taking another break from kissing the grin off Dani’s lips. “Really weird--did you tell Flora?”</p><p>Dani frowns. “No...”</p><p>“Because she...just...” Jamie shakes her head. “Never mind. Just. Kid’s gonna be really excited, is all.”</p><p>Dani pulls her close, arms around Jamie’s waist, listening to the far-off strains of an ancient love song. In the dark, in the practiced delight of one another, they dance. </p>
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